When I attended the introductory lecture which explained the design brief to us I felt nervous and lost. DT and ICT are not my specialties, or things that I would regard myself as good at and although I had previously taken on DT as my second specialism earlier on in the year I did not feel confident at all with the brief. I introduced myself to the member of my group that I did not know and discovered that she was a DT specialist, so this put my mind a little at ease because she had a lot more experience than myself and the other group member. We spoke about what different activities we could do in the classroom with the children and planned to meet up outside of university so that we could talk about our ideas in more depth. We researched the school curriculum map and found out that year 4 had previously learnt about Unicef and what they did around the world to aid people, we decided that this would be a relevant link to include when planning our workshop.
Below is a picture of the notes that I made when we met up in a group to discuss the workshop.
After many different ideas being explored we finally settled on creating a world map and using different coloured lights to represent different ‘world issues’. We were all equally involved in the discussion and we made sure that we thoroughly planned and explored all of the cross-curricular links that we would be using and although we were only required to use DT and ICT, we found out that our workshop would include elements from the geography, science and PSHE curriculum.
Below you can see the different cross-curricular links that we explored throughout our time in school.
If we were to teach the children to use the crumbles to illuminate our world maps then we would have to learn how to use it ourselves first! I have had very little experience in dealing with scratch and so when we were introduced to crumble I was overwhelmed. It took me a while to understand all of the different commands and put together a simple programme, but after around 20 minutes I was able to program the sparkles to change different colours.
Below you can see a correctly programmed crumble.
After we had successfully grasped the concept of crumble and sparkles we then had to gather the resources. We enquired with Sue about the Squirrels scrap store that we knew that the university had a membership to previously. We were told that we still had the membership and we got the correct details and made a trip down there to look for resources.
Whilst at the scrap store we made sure to find many different mediums for the children to use, we gathered fabrics, carpet, plastics, papers, clothes and so on. This was a beneficial place to visit and if I was to do DT in school then I would think about visiting Squirrels for resources.
After we had gathered all of the materials that we were going to be using in the classrooms we decided that we should meet up to cut the materials down to manageable sizes and to make the PowerPoint that we would be using in the classroom. Because we had struggled a little bit with the crumble and we were worried about the time constraints we decided that it would be a good idea to print a crumble help sheet. I researched the crumble and found a hep guide written by Redfern that had a really good page that explained about programming the sparkles. We printed out 15 copies of this so that the children could access them if they needed them.
Below you can see the help sheet that we printed off to give to the children.
The workshop in school went better than I thought it would go. The children reacted very well to the workshop and were engaged and motivated throughout. I was the person in the group who took the ICT lesson, the children were in groups of three with one crumble between them, I explained every element of the crumble to them and showed them how to connect the different wires. I modelled this to show them every step of the way. The children listened well and had an enjoyable time programming the crumble and made links between the crumble programme and scratch, therefore using prior knowledge. Even the staff members were impressed with the technology and said that they were going to buy their own for the children to use in the school. If I was going to do this workshop again I would allow the children to have a crumble each (although this would be expensive) so that they are able to get the full benefit and freedom of programming their own, this is because some of the children were not very good at working in groups and so some of the children missed out.
The DT aspect of the workshop went well, the children were happy to work in groups and demonstrated effective teamwork, they were able to explore their different ideas and collaborate them all to make their final piece. The children were well aware of the health and safety elements of the workshop and were introduced to subject specific equipment such as the fabric scissors and the sewing needles. If I was to do this workshop again in schools I would have made the groups a little bit smaller to ensure that everyone had an active role at all times.
When the workshop had finished we gave the children a template to reflect on, they had to self-evaluate what went well, what could be improved and what did they most enjoy, after miscommunication with the first class teacher the children ended up evaluating us, what they liked about the workshop and what we could do better next time. However, with the second class they evaluated what we wanted them to. We made sure to use a world template for the children to write on so that it was relevant to the project.
Below you can see the template that the children were given.
All in all, the project went really well and I am pleased with the outcome. I have learnt a lot by participating in this module, for example: how to plan a DT workshop, how to implement cross-curricular links, how to use a crumble, where to go for different resources, how to face challenges in a group and how to creatively teach ICT to children. I will be sure to take what I have learnt in this project in to my first teaching position with me.