Teach-Primary-Issue-19.1

FAIL BETTER Construct some of your most creative STEM lessons yet, and build pupils’ resilience with cardboard engineering, says Paul Tyler F or the past 15 months I have been teaching sustainable engineering across the upper primary stages of my school, with a remit to develop children’s skills, creativity and innovation. I have spent a good deal of the time a very long way out of my comfort zone, but have been massively inspired by what the children bring to the experiences. We work in a ‘failure-rich’ iterative design environment, where children are encouraged to try things, fail, evaluate and try again – I’ve discovered that I am particularly good at modelling the failing bit! On a serious note, progress can sometimes seem slow, but giving pupils creative freedom and allowing them to learn frommistakes genuinely means they better understand concepts, and skills are more deeply embedded. Children use cardboard for a lot of their building work. Why cardboard? It’s actually the perfect material for building projects in primary schools for a number of reasons: 1. It is readily available and usually free. I put out a letter to our families once a month with a list of resources we need – cardboard is always on it – and I get everything I need for the children’s projects for free. 2. It is highly versatile and easy to work with. Cardboard comes in a wide range of grades from thin cardstock to cereal packets, strong corrugated card, and thick moulded card. If children have the right tools available, then working with any type of cardboard is safe and easy. 3. It’s a sustainable, eco-friendly resource. The cardboard that gets donated to the school has already served its primary purpose and gets a second life as the children build with it. After building it can be recycled or shredded and composted. 4. It’s a totally safe building material. Apart from the rare possibility of a paper cut, cardboard and the tools used to work with it are totally safe for children of all ages. 5. It is a perfect building material. Cardboard can be made into almost anything that children want, from a large tower made out of sheets of corrugated cardboard, to a detailed model of a car, or even an accurate moving model of a human arm. Creative processes Engineering is among the most creative endeavours that humans undertake, and developing children’s creativity through engineering starts by giving them opportunities to play with materials, time to explore methods to join these materials together, and a free rein to build. Our infants all have access to a ‘creative station’ space for ‘junk’ modeling; sometimes there are prompt cards with ideas, but usually it’s just free building time. These areas are constantly busy, and children love to talk about what they are building. There are basic tools for them to use, too, including scissors, glue, a carboard saw and masking tape, and older pupils train younger ones to use Makedo tools to cut, punch and attach cardboard. As children progress through the school, they refine their skills; design briefs become more detailed, material choices expand and there are increasing opportunities for collaboration. But the opportunities for creativity are always there, and a plethora of open-ended challenges ensures there is always freedom during the design process. Lay foundations I discovered very early on that I needed to explicitly teach some core skills before children were able to go and work independently. From using the Makedo kits in Fail again, 48 | www.teachwire.net