A CLASS STORY by Mr. Horsfall & Mr. Letcher’s Year 5/6 Class
In Design Technology this year, students have been given challenges that have included them solving a problem and then making prototypes to test if their solutions work. These units of work have been planned around the students becoming familiar with an engineering design cycle.
The design cycle that students have followed include these steps:
- Identify what the problem/ challenge is
- Research and make design plans
- Make a prototype
- Test the prototype
- Get feedback and improve their prototypes
- Continue steps 4-5 until they are happy with their solution
The students have been involved in 2 major projects so far:
The Egg Drop Problem
students needed to construct something that could catch an egg, dropped from a 1 metre high ramp, without the egg breaking
The ‘catcher’ could only be made using paper with minimal adhesives allowed.
Rubber-band Powered Car
Students had to use the energy caused by tensioning rubber bands to power and make a car move as far as possible.
The car could be made using any materials and construction methods.
With both of these projects, students made fantastic designs and were able to come up with successful design solutions.
In term 4, we are continuing this process as students learn about chain reactions. They are making Rube Goldberg machines. These are machines that do a very simple task (like watering a plant) in a very complicated way. If you would like to see what this is all about take a look at the video below: