We have had an incredible end to our first full week back at school. Today, Years 5 and 6 were visited by George Slater who is a Royal Airforce Engineer as part of a STEM science day. Year 5 are currently learning all about Earth and Space and it was a perfect opportunity to include Year 6 to see how much they could remember from last academic year.

We began with a mission briefing in the hall. We looked at pictures of the kinds of aircraft George has worked on and used them to identify features of rockets. We learnt key vocabulary to help us understand how a rocket can be successfully built and launched, such as: trajectory, fuselage and the centre of gravity.

The children were then sent to their classrooms, put into pairs/groups and tasked with creating their very own rocket ready for launch. It was great taking a step back and watching the children working reciprocally together. After break, the children had the opportunity to test their rockets on the playground to see if their design worked. After watching the rockets either work well or not travel particularly far, the children went back the drawing board and began redesigning their rockets for the afternoon finale.

In the afternoon, the children were buzzing to launch their final designs into space! It was excellent seeing just how much better some of the rockets flew in the afternoon after making adjustments to their initial prototypes.

The winners of the afternoon (the rocket which flew closest to the target) received a medal each.

We would like to say a huge thank you to George for travelling all the way from Cornwall in order to deliver a workshop that the children will never forget!

Can we build rockets every day?

Hayley