To date 27 Primary Schools and 8 Secondary Schools plus Moray SEBN Pinefield Campus have taken part in the full day training event led by Primary Engineer. The Primary teacher training was Structures and Mechanisms with Basic Electrics (with a simple car for younger Early/First level and a Motorised Car for First/Second level pupils) and for Secondary teachers was Fluid Power Challenge (Hydraulic Crane).
At the training teachers were introduced to their linked engineer who will provide support and visit the school during the project.
In both instances the training empowered teachers to deliver a practical engineering project with their pupils. Teachers were provided with the required kit and access to a Virtual Learning Environment of support materials.
In Moray this project has been linked to the Engineering Sector of the Moray Skills Pathway and Activity Overview Guides produced and given to teachers along with a strategic document highlighting the links to the Career Education Standards. I envision teachers using these additional materials to embed this IDL STEM project into their curriculum as part of developing pupil skills for life, learning and work.
Cohort 1 and 2 schools are invited to the Celebration Event hosted by Moray College as part of their Science week. This will take place on Thursday 1st March from 9.30-12.30. In the afternoon Moray College have planned some additional STEM workshops for pupils. If you want to stay on for this additional session, please let me know so that they can get an idea of numbers for workshops.
While we would love everyone to be able to attend the Celebration event there is a limit on numbers. Currently each Primary School can send TWO teams – teams may be from the same level of project or one from each of the two Primary projects. Each Secondary School can send ONE team.
This means that you should realistically be looking to complete your project by the end of January and have a mini celebration/competition in your schools to select pupils to go forward to the regional heat in March.
What are the next steps for schools?
- In discussion with SLT; Primary Engineer trained staff will need to decide if they want to take part in the celebration event on Thursday 1st March. To take part in this, schools would have to ensure that pupils have designed/ made their project AND completed the logbook. The Virtual Learning Environment has copies of all of these but I have included the key documents in this e-mail for you to look at.
- If you do decide to move forward with the celebration event, then I would need to know by Friday 3rd November (this does not commit you but gives me an idea of maximum numbers). If you wish to stay for the afternoon session, again let me know by Friday 3rd November.
- Even if you decide not to attend the celebration event, I would recommend completing this project because of its links to the Moray Skills Pathway Engineering sector. The visits from your linked Engineer provide excellent opportunities to learn about the skills of engineering and the types of engineering jobs in the local area and you can also use the project to help develop some of the engineering habits of mind – these are excellent transferable skills including creative problem solving, visualising, improving and adapting (RAEng Learning to be an Engineer Report).
