Today was spent working in a year 5 class carrying out our Computing and Design & Technology activity day. Hannah and I worked in one year 5 class while Rosie and Emma worked with the other year 5 class.

Our day began by re-introducing ourselves and explain why we were working in their class today. After this we allowed the children to group themselves into groups of 4 before they designed their car together. We asked the children to draw in detail and add colours and labels to their drawing.

After break time the children chose their role within the group: the collector, the designer, the maker and the tester. They then had an hour and 45 minutes to make their car, including the electrical circuit and decorations. We worked through making the motor circuit as a class which was led by myself, I read the instructions out for the children to all follow and checked they were completing the circuit correctly. After that the children were able to follow their designs and create their decorations which they all did really well. All children showed a strong understanding of how to create their designs using the resources available and all the cars look great.

After lunch time the children explored Crumble and created their own LED circuit which we attached to a ‘Finish’ sign. The children picked up Crumble really well and could easily create a code for lights. We talked about the different commands they could use and we talked about debugging and how to debug a code. A few children applied their debugging knowledge when their code didn’t work as they would like.

After this children completed an evaluation of their work they completed today. At the end of the day we raced the two classes cars against each other in the small hall. We had a start and finish line and set the children off to race their cars. A couple of the cars didn’t race as well as we had hoped but overall the children had a good time and enjoyed the whole day. The class teachers and children agreed that they had been able to explore and use a lot of their skills today and even if their car didn’t turn out as they had hoped they had enjoyed creating the car. The teachers told the children they would be able to play and use their cars during Golden Time and wet play in the future.

Overall it was a successful day, all of us, and the children, had a fun time making the cars and they did look great and worked really well.

Today I worked in the Design & Technology workshop in order to prepare our resources for our day in school next week. I began by making a list of resources that our group needed and sourcing where I can get them from.

Each car needed:

Cardboard base and 2 pieces of dowel, long piece of dowel, straw, 2 bottle top wheels with holes, can with a hole in base, 9v battery, battery connector, black wire, 2 paperclips, motor, motor stopper, elastic band, resources to decorate.

The school children were providing the resources to decorate with and paperclips, Rosie and Emma sorted out the bottle top wheels and cans with the holes in, the motors, motor stoppers, wire, elastic bands and batteries were all sourced by us, so I just had to prepare the card bases with dowel sticks and another piece of dowel for each group of children.

I spent the morning cutting up pieces of cardboard into rectangles and sticks of dowel into shorted lengths to attach to the card with a glue gun. This took me a few hours to complete and after this I collected the electrical resources to make sure our group had enough batteries, wires and motors for all of the children. After this I took the resources home ready to bring them back for the day in school the next week.

Today was spent making, testing and planning how to make the moving car with the electrical circuit for out Design & Technology activity of the day. We worked as a group to create the circuit and make the car move around the room.

We began with our starting point of using a motor circuit and a can with an elastic band to make the card base move.  This involved experimenting with the positioning of all the components, different battery powers and different materials before eventually completing the car. We were all happy with how the car was made, we agreed the design and making of the car wasn’t too complicated for our year 5 group to make themselves. I wrote an instruction sheet for how to make the car with steps to take for attaching the can and elastic band, creating the circuit and adding two back wheels, we will use these instructions to hand out to each group of children on our school day.

We also plan to take our practice car into school on the school day in order to show the children how it will all work and show them what their car base will look like.

Today we visited the classes we will be working with on our DT/ Computing day. We spent the afternoon getting to know the children, explaining who we are and the activity we plan to do with the classes and had the children design their own motorized car.

Firstly we completed a series of games with the children to get to know their names by asking them to line up in alphabetical order and height order without talking to each other. After this we explained the activity we had planned to do with them, in a few week, by explaining they will make a moving car using a motor and cans and bottle tops as wheels. We then set the children with the activity of designing their moving car, colouring it in, labelling  and listing the resources they need.

Today we explored how to use Crumble- a programming software that can be synced to LED’s.

Firstly, we had to connect the Crumble board to the switch and lights using the crocodile clips in order for the circuit to work. I worked with Hannah and we were able to correctly link up the LED’s to the Crumble board, battery pack and switch.

We began by exploring how to set instructions on Crumble, this program is similar to Scratch in the way that we have to program the lights to turn on and off and change colour through step by step instructions. I quickly understood how to program Crumble to make sequences of LED light patterns, making the lights change colour, flash, turn on and turn off.

Once we had set our chosen instructions we could sync it to the Crumble board via USB cable. I chose to set a sequence to make the LED lights flash different colours after a 2 second wait. This then meant the LED’s would turn on and off and change colour in the patterns I had set.

Welcome to my blog based around my ‘Computing and Design & Technology’ Connecting Worlds course.

Here I will document my planning which took place before carrying out a whole day activity with a year 5 class.

Enjoy!