Eight enthusiastic Year 5s from Hemdean House joined us on Thursday 7th December for the second of our DT & Engineering Workshops. Led by DT teacher, Jeff Fuller, and Head of DT & Engineering, Mark Smith, the group were very engaged building their LEGO cars and modifying them to drive the up the ramp which offered an adjustable gradient to our budding engineers!
The visitors from Caversham faced the challenge of constructing their vehicles and setting them up to drive initially. Following a tutorial on gears and ratios the classmates tackled iterative design by adding more and more LEGO pieces to their cars attempting to achieve the ideal hill-climbing model. “I really liked the anticipation of waiting to see of the LEGO car would go up.” commented Afonso. One pair were delighted to have broken the workshop record with a car that could manage a slope of 48 degrees!
The visit concluded with lunch in Oakview restaurant where the children enjoyed the food, a moment of Quakerly silence and an experience of the moving tray collector!
Head of Hemdean House, Helen Chalmers, enthused, “The workshop was extremely successful in giving students an insight into the design process and how you make adaptations. They have a better idea now of how adaptations improved their designs; this was helped by the video clips shown.”
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