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Describe how you would involve your pupils in an art, music drama or creative writing project based around your local natural or scientific heritage.
I would take inspiration from the old abbey in our village for a classroom design and make project, with a special focus on recreating its strong stone arches.
We would start by looking at pictures of the abbey and discussing how the arches hold themselves up. A short video about engineers would help set the scene.
The children would then explore materials like cardboard, paper mâché, cardboard tubes and glue, deciding which ones would be best for building sturdy arches. Through talk, sketching and a quick demonstration from me, they would plan their own designs.
Working in groups, the pupils would build their abbey-inspired models, paying close attention to the shape and strength of the arches and using their memories of trips to the abbey alongside the images on the interactive whiteboard to shape their abbey.
At the end, each group would show their structure to the class, explain how they made the arches and give some positive feedback to the other groups.
Really nice idea! The bridge idea is something so simple but could definitely be used all over the country or adapted slightly to suit. I plan to do something similar with an old monastery in our village and the arches that have survived for hundreds of years! Thanks for the inspiration.
There’s an old monastery in the village and I’d use that as the starting point for a design and make project with my class. We see it from the school every day and it would be interesting to walk down and actually look at it up close.
The thing that stood out from an engineering standpoint was the stone arches, especially how the stones in the windows and doorways are still holding themselves up without needing much else to keep them in place.
For a fun builder challenge, the children would work in pairs or small groups to build their own freestanding arch. They’d use wooden blocks, cardboard or foam and try to get it to stand on its own without any glue or tape to hold it and then see if it can hold some weight.
They’d sketch their ideas first, discuss them in their groups, test what works, and fix what doesn’t. It would be an easy hands-on way to explore forces and balance while linking straight back to a real building they know and see everyday from the school.
Register your garden with the All Ireland Pollinator Plan and record your actions for pollinators, then outline how you would register your school and what actions you could take to help pollinators: I’d register my garden on the Actions for Pollinators website . Sign up for a free account, zoom in and draw around the garden, then log the actual things I’ve done already, such as cutting the grass less often so flowers can grow (No Mow May at home), planting stuff that bees actually like and that flowers across the seasons, leaving a bit of bare soil or sticking up a simple bee hotel, and not spraying with pesticides.
I’d do the exact same for the school. Map the school grounds on the same site and record the actions there. Leave some of the grass longer (especially over summer with Pitches for Pollinators), plant a small wildflower patch or border, put in a few more bug hotels or log piles, stop spraying herbicides, and get the students involved using the Junior Pollinator Plan resources.We’ve already set up a wild flower garden and bug hotels at our school but a no mow area is definitely something that we could look at ! Great ideas
Hi Marie,
Really nice idea, ive done similar with class groups before and its always worked well. Think Geohive will be a great addition in future.
For younger classes , I’d plan a simple, active map-making lesson focused on mapping out the school and the grounds.
We’d start indoors talking about maps, before heading outside. The children would gather natural materials—stones, leaves, twigs, pine cones—and use them on the ground to create a large collaborative map of the yard and school building. Each group could represent different features (a line of twigs for a path, leaves for the grass area, stones for the building).
Back inside, we’d photograph their nature maps and compare them with Google Maps or GeoHive on the interactive whiteboard, zooming in on our school so they can spot the same places from above. The lesson could finish with the class drawing a simpler version of their map on paper, adding a few symbols that the class have agreed on together.After reading Liston’s paper, I really thought about how STEM is taught in the schools I work across. I’m lucky that my role lets me teach quite a bit of STEM, but if I’m honest, most of it has been centred around coding programmes and just getting through the science curriculum. Engineering design and real problem-solving haven’t been as important or used as often.
The paper helped me see that authentic STEM is more than the acronym — it’s about integrating the four areas through hands-on, real-world challenges that build creativity, critical thinking and teamwork. Kids understand things far better when they’re actually designing, testing and improving solutions themselves.
Because I’m spread across a few schools, this is something I can help develop more widely. I’m planning to shift towards more design-based projects, like improving something practical in the school environment, so the children experience the full STEM cycle. It’s definitely going to make me a better STEM educator.