Lesson 3: Designing a pneumatic toy
Designing pneumatics toys through thumbnail sketches and technical diagrams.
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Learning objective
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Success criteria
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Before the lesson
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Lesson plan
Hand out whiteboards and pens (one each) and remind the children of the diagrams they looked at during the previous lesson: thumbnail sketch, cross-sectional and exploded diagram. Ask the children to write a property or fact about one of the diagram types or draw one of the sketches (they should represent the diagram rather than a detailed image).
Remind the children of the actions allocated to the different diagram types in the previous lesson. Call the children individually and ask them to show their whiteboard to the rest of the class. The class should do the action that matches their example on the whiteboard. Repeat with a variety of children and diagram types.
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After 4 years of being a TV and radio presenter, Vicki headed to the secondary classroom where she spent 12 years teaching Design and Technology as well as PE. Working as a subject leader, she ran D&T tournaments and weekly clubs to get her students involved while also building stronger links with feeder schools to understand how these skills were developed in younger children. This inspired her to move to the prep school, where she has spent the last 4 years. She loves creating engaging lessons and projects for her pupils as well as running a baking club and school-wide ECO projects.
Vicki has created a topic on Structures in Design & Technology and her free lesson features ‘Making a Baby Bear’s Chair’ for KS1 pupils.
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