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Year 3
Year 3
Year 3's primary focus for STEAM was good health and well being (SDG 3).
We enabled our clients to 'Adapt, repair and restore' by using our science learning about animal and human skeletons to develop designs for robotic prosthetic limbs, inspired by workshops with local professionals.
We investigated the role and structure of different skeletons through puppetry, dance and a visit to ZSL London zoo!
We studied the human form in our art lessons, through sketching and sculpting. We also used our newfound knowledge of movement to inform our coding and design decisions.
We began our STEAM learning by finding out about the body: identifying that humans and some other animals have skeletons and muscles for support, protection and movement.
We learned the scientific vocabulary for the bones in the human body. We were interested to find that an adult has 206 bones, but a baby has more!
We put our newly acquired scientific vocabulary to good use in music this term, practising using a clear and confident voice to perform a rap about the skeleton. You'll never believe it, but we wrote the lyrics ourselves!
How many new bones words can you identify?
We became Orthopedic Surgeons for a day, and carried out consultations with our patients in role, using our oracy skills and scientific vocabulary to explain the results of x-rays.
In English, we wrote letters to our patient's GP to inform them about the consultation and our prescriptions.
We thoroughly enjoyed meeting Albert, the three-legged tortoise, and learned about how to handle her safely. We learned that she has both an exoskeleton and endoskeleton, as she has a hard outer shell and a skeleton inside her body.
This new learning helped us to classify a range of animals and deepened our understanding of which are vertebrates and invertebrates.
Albert gave us inspiration for prosthetic designs for animals. We developed our designs with our family at home and some of us even tested our design on Albert and suggested improvements!
What would your design look like?
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We were so lucky to be able to participate in a workshop as part of our partnership with ZSL London Zoo. Our leader taught us all about bones and movements and we even had the chance to see real animal skeletons up close!
Roaming around the zoo gave us a chance to ask questions about a range of the animals we had learnt about and watch how their bones and muscles enable them to move.
Building on our new scientific learning about how skeletons work, we were able to create our own creatures using collage.
We made sure our animals would be able to stand and move and that their vital organs would be protected!
At last, we were ready to get designing!
A workshop with Little Angel Theatre in Islington helped us to understand what materials would be most useful for puppet design.
We asked ourselves questions like:
How can I ensure my puppet can move?
How can I ensure my puppet can stand up straight?
How will I control my puppet?
Next, we demonstrated our understanding of how muscles move in pairs.
We learnt that one muscle contracts while the other relaxes.
This learning was extremely valuable for helping us develop our own joining techniques in preparation for our puppet making...
...and our puppets!
We were extremely lucky to meet Ella Dove of the Limbless Association.
She answered lots of our questions about what it is like to live as an amputee. We then designed our own prosthetic legs around the theme of what makes us feel strong!
We went on a local walk to Camden Square and mapped and measured out our route using trundle wheels.
We then pieced together the map on a large scale and used Blue Bots to code our route!
In order to develop our understanding of how prosthetics are designed and developed, we studied the Vitruvian man.
We learnt that Vitruvius stated that human bodies have certain proportions that meant we could use our height to estimate the size of our hands, feet and arm span.
We then measured ourselves to prove whether or not Vitruvius' theory is true.
Our next amazing workshop was led by Cheryn at Slamcore, a robotics company. Cheryn is a Product Support Engineer who works with clients to help them discover our their visualising robotic software could help them to improve their product. We got curious in role as Product Support Engineers ourselves, asking each other great questions about the problems we were having with our products.
We enjoyed learning about some of Slamcore's project and took inspiration for designing our own robots.
In English, we read Ted Hughes', 'The Iron Man'.
Inspired by the Iron Man's fall from the top of the cliff, we wrote and illustrated free-verse and acrostic poems.
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