Engineers week was held between 29th February and 6th March. First we talked about the different types of engineers there are. Then we talked about the skills and qualities you would need to have to be a good engineer.
The boys got to make lots of different structures. Their first challenge was to build a structure that would hold a tennis ball. They were only given 25 straws and 60 c.m. of tape.
First the boys got to plan what they would like their structure to look like. They worked so well as a team to discuss their ideas and chose the best one for the group.
Here are some of their sketches…
They got to work on making their design.
Two groups made a structure that would hold the tennis ball.
During the week, the boys looked at bridges from around the world. We looked at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Sydney Harbour Bridge, Tower Bridge in London and Ponte Vecchio in Florence.
We studied some famous engineers such as Thomas Telford. Then the boys got to make bridges in their groups using straws and masking tape.
The boys looked at the tallest buildings around the world. The top five were:
- Burj Khalifa in Dubai
- Shanghai Tower in China
- Abraj Al-Bait Clock Tower in Saudia Arabia
- Ping-An Finance Centre in China
- Golden Finance 117 in China
The boys were challenged to make the tallest structure they could using paper cups.
The boys got to make a marble run. They made it from cardboard. Miss. Lavelle turned the tables on there side so the boys had something to stick the cardboard against. It looked something like this!
The boys really enjoyed the activities during engineers week. Lots of the boys in Miss. Lavelle’s class said that they would like to be engineers by the end of the week!
About Nicola Lavelle