SEEDA Case Study 2

South East Berkshire & Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead EBP's

Legoland Windsor Fairground Gears Workshop

South East Berkshire and Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead EBP's worked jointly on the Legoland Windsor Interactive Workshops. Case Study's 2 and 3 reflect 2 of the workshops on offer.

Name of Workshop: Fairground Gears

Description of pre-visit activity and curriculum link:

Used a large set of Learning Resources gears to demonstrate basic movement – how direction of rotation is reversed between cogs etc. This set of gears is identical in size, so used the idea from the Legoland literature about demonstrating different speeds with a rotary whisk. Kept this section brief as I didn't want to infringe too much on the content of the workshop. We did look at how the whisk changed the direction of the rotation from a vertical plane to a horizontal one, and demonstrated how this could be achieved using the kits.

The challenge which was set for the children was to design a shape which would lock the gears, and not allow them to turn. We had previously filled the boards with gears and discovered that even with every space used, the gears could still rotate freely, and realised that the gears in diagonal rows turned in the same direction. After 15-20 minutes two of the four groups working in the class had realised that to lock gears of the same size, three of them had to interlock simultaneously. (ie, one horizontal, two vertical, but interlocking at right angles to each other and with the horizontal wheel.)

Curriculum links: At this point in the year, the workshop did not fit readily into any of our current schemes of work for Year 5, and asking colleagues didn't get any obvious responses regarding coverage of gears.

Comments on the delivery: Unable to comment as I was working in another Workshop at the time. Reports back from the children were that they had thoroughly enjoyed it, and it was clear from speaking to other members of staff that the children had all felt a sense of achievement, regardless of ability.

Pupil comments:

• I liked Fairground gears very much...
• I think you should let people have more time to try out the gears and see what they do!
• They [the instructors] were very nice to us, and the pictures in the book were very easy to understand.
• ...I would have liked to have found out about Ferris Wheels as well...
  (From a very able pupil.)
• She stopped the group if she saw something really good...
• I liked working in pairs because you can share your ideas.
• I liked it because we got to build rides and that was really fun.
• ...if we got stuck they would come straight away and help us get it right.
• I thought the booklets they gave us were very good and helpful as well, because I got some of my ideas from there.
• It was easy to understand, but not so easy that it was boring.
• I liked the way the room was decorated.
• I really think it was good, but for people to stretch their imagination you should add a few more lego bricks and gears to the set.
• The Fairground Gears was more than fun! Answering the questions we were given made me learn something.
• I liked the way they explained.
• I liked building the things they told us to in the book.
• Thank you for a lovely trip!

Previous Case study | Case Study index | Next Case Study