This Design and technology teacher video provides an overview of pivots, levers and linkages, explaining how these components work together to create movement. It introduces the key vocabulary pupils need to understand, including how a pivot allows a lever to move and how linkages connect multiple levers to form a mechanism.

The video also explores the relationship between input and output, explaining how an input starts a mechanism and produces an output movement. Teachers learn how connected levers can work together to change the direction or type of movement, developing their subject knowledge and confidence in explaining how linkage mechanisms work.

This video is part of Kapow Primary’s Design and technology videos, which enable teachers and pupils to explore and make their own products.

See more of our Year 3 Design and technology scheme of work.

• Design and technology, Year 3, Mechanical systems: Making a moving monster, Lesson 1: Pivots, levers and linkages.
• Design and technology, Year 3, Mechanical systems: Making a moving monster.