Session 1 – Ask
Throughout careers week, Year 5 have been given an engineering topic that is called ‘The Sky’s The Limit.’ Today we carried out “Session1: Ask” which asked the question ‘How do some things fly better than others?’ We looked into how simple systems work, identifying how each part depends on another and predicting what would happen if there was a missing piece or link. We created paper aeroplanes and were able to fly them to observe how it flew, the distance it travelled, the height it reached and the stability. We then came into discussion about what we think would happen if certain parts were taken away e.g. wings, nose, tail, chassis/body. We worked in groups for this and each person removed a certain part from their aeroplane and then retested the flight of the plane to see how the missing component affected the flight. After we had finished testing our aeroplanes, we held a discussion about UAV’s (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) and looked into the specific features they have and what they are used for. We then moved onto other systems and discussed if a bike had a slipped chain or a flat tire; how brakes, engines and wheels all work together; and what needs to go right for a UAV, or a drone, to deliver a package safely. We spoke about the failure of one component having an effect on the whole system. The children worked fantastically well and did an amazing job with the paper aeroplanes!
Session 2 – Create
Session 2 of our engineering topic ‘The Sky’s The Limit’ which was called ‘Create.’ This session looked into how engineers can design flying systems that launch, glide and land safely in challenging environments. We had to use our knowledge of how components work and interact to create a product that achieves a specific purpose, as well as creating and evaluating a series of prototypes, taking 2D designs into 3D, making improvements based on observation and feedback. We started off with some images of a helicopter, an airboat and a UAV and discussed what was the same, what was different and which one would be the odd one out and why. The children volunteered some excellent discussions about their reasoning for choosing which one for their questions. We then watched a couple of videos about what makes flight so fascinating and a video called The Sky’s The Limit showing what we were going to do. We then went on to create our own parachutes! We did this using a plastic bag for the parachute part, with some string and blu-tac for the strings and weight. We then tested our parachutes by dropping them from three different heights (1m, 1.5m, 2m) to see how long it took to land and what type of landing it had. The children loved creating their parachutes and enjoyed testing them out!
Session 3 – Improve
Our last session in our Engineering Educates Robotics Challenge in The Sky’s The Limit was Session 3: Improve. In this session, we looked at how engineers make ‘things; work better. We focused on finding the problems with our parachutes that we made the other day, or just elements we could improve to make our parachute better. We were able to test that things work using a logical approach, gathering evidence to make an informed decision. We also evaluated how the product was working, identified areas that we could improve in a produce and described possible changes that could enhance the design. We looked at the parachutes we made on Tuesday and were able to discuss what we could do to improve our flight or landing and started to discuss creating prototype number 2. The children then created their next parachute which they had decided needed to have a larger surface area to allow it to float to the ground a little bit smoother. The children created and tested this before coming up with their idea for prototype number 3. This idea was to add 2 more strings to have a total of 4, and have them a little bit longer. The children made and tested prototype number 3 and logged all of their results. The children noticed that the more improvements they made to their design, the better their parachute worked. Well done Year 5, your parachutes were amazing!
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