Year 2 embarked on an exciting learning journey this week as they delved into a series of books called ‘The Questioneers’ by Andrea Beaty focused on different elements of STEM.
They began by reading Rosie Revere, Engineer, the story of a young, brilliant inventor of gizmos and gadgets who dreams of becoming a great engineer. The children then planned and wrote their own fictional story based on the same structure – what big dream would their main character have? What problem / challenge will they incur? Would any of our learner powers help them achieve their goals – resilience? Adaptability? Collaboration? In her story, Rosie had many ‘flops’ before finally achieving her goal; an important reminder to the children that mistakes help us learn and grow.
Year 2 enjoyed the book so much, they asked to read others from the same series: Iggy Peck, Architect, Ada Twist, Scientist, Sophia Valdez, Future Prez – all of which lead to many questions and great discussions about what it meant to be an engineer, architect or scientist and the skills required for each job. The children carried out research about other famous engineers and inventors, including the discovery that it took Thomas Ellison 2000 attempts to get a light bulb to work!
Their learning was growing much bigger than the plan intended… The children then created their own flying machines from collected recyclable materials and set up a zipline across the classroom to test their inventions. What was making the machine slide down? They had to persevere and adapt their designs to work it out – they didn’t let their ‘first flops’ hold them back!
In the story, Rosie realises that the only true failure is if you quit. At Banstead Prep, we are proud of the way our broad curriculum develops skills for life that encourage our children to aim high and dream big – anything is possible with enough determination, perseverance and resilience!
The children in Year 2 have thoroughly enjoyed the wide range of learning opportunities that have developed from one book, and their teachers have enjoyed developing and adapting their plans to follow the children’s interests – just one example of our ‘Free to be Me‘ approach to education.
