The Academy Cohort 1 students regrouped for their second year of the programme during the school Half Term on the 26th and 27th October for an action-packed first session! There was a fantastic atmosphere across the two days as we regrouped for the first time since the summer’s End of Year 1 Academy Showcase.
The first session back entailed some fun team-building activities led by Academy facilitator Ben. The main activity of the weekend was an engineering design challenge which centred around teams of students designing and building an elastic-powered boat. The boat had to be able travel 6 metres or more, and the students were all up for the challenge that lay before them!
General Electric (GE) volunteers joined the Connectr team on the day to lend their advice and expertise. The volunteers gave observations and some feedback on the team building activities, and later guided the students on their engineering design challenge. The volunteers guided the students through the engineering design process: Identifying and defining the problem, Gathering information, Identifying possible solutions, Creating a prototype, Testing and evaluating their prototype, and Refining and/or redesigning the solution. At the end, teams presented their solutions and reflected on the process and final result.
The students gained an understanding of what best practice looks like when implementing the engineering design process from the GE volunteers and were pleased to gain feedback throughout the process which helped to improve their designs. A big thank you to all the GE volunteers for giving us their time and joining us for what was a fantastic kick off to Year 2! The Connectr team and students are looking forward to the exciting year ahead and the next step on our Engineering Academy journey.
