In our Talk for Writing topic in P3 we became STEM investigators 👨🔬 👩🔬 The pupils’ challenge was to create a boat for Paddington to safely sail to London in. This meant it had to be big and strong enough to hold him as he travelled across the ocean.
Firstly, they got a budget and had to decide which items they wanted to buy to build their boat. There were lots of interesting discussions and debates to agree as a group on which items they wanted.
Then, they got to work on building their boat. Some pupils realised that they had bought items that they didn’t need so were able to return and exchange for other items. This helped the P3s to practice using coins in real life, deciding how to spend money and work out change. The P3s worked as a group, used negotiating skills and learnt about compromise while making their decisions.
Once they had successfully built their boat, they got to work on testing it in water. They used basins and tunnels , varying the height to get the optimal speed for Paddington. They tested whether their boat could hold Paddington safely in water and how long it could float for.
The pupils used a wide variety of their Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities throughout this task such as working together to make decisions, managing their behaviour in different settings, planning their approach to collaborative work and experimenting with different outcomes.
