Welcome to Engineers Week in St Peter’s! This morning in 5th class, we started thinking about what we know about engineers.
We started by thinking individually about words that come to mind when we hear the word ‘engineer’. We also drew pictures of what we think an engineer looks like.
Next, we worked in pairs to discuss what we know about engineers.
Then we shared our work with the rest of the class.
We made a Wordle to show what we think an engineer does, at the start of Engineers Week. We’re going to make another one on Friday to assess what we’ve learned in the meantime. We wonder if it’ll change much!
We use Think-Pair-Share a lot to get us thinking, but the Wordle is a new addition. It was suggested in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) course with the RDS that Ms Sexton is attending at the moment. You can learn more about the course here.
This type of assessment is important so that the teacher knows where the class is starting from, so that he/she can plan the lessons more effectively. Assessment that feeds into teaching and learning like this is called formative assessment or assessment for learning.
Updated: Here’s our Wordle from the end of the week. Look carefully to see what we learned during Engineer’s Week 2014!
10:31 pm on February 18th, 2014
Hello all,
Ms. Griffin here, from St. Patrick’s NS, Stamullen, Co. Meath. I am very impressed with your school blog in general and with this post. I am attending the STEM course Ms. Sexton is attending at the moment. I too use Think-Pair-Share with my class, but we have never tried Wordle. I love the idea and might steal it to use with my class!
It is wonderful to see from your Wordle that you’ve learned about the work of Biomedical and Aeronautical Engineers this week – many of you could yourselves be the engineers of the future.
My third class pupils have been doing many experiments in Science as a result of my attendance at the same course as Ms. Sexton, but I haven’t yet posted on the class blog about it, because we have a lot going on with our preparations for entering an “Our World Irish Aid” project.
We did post about our search for signs of spring however, which fed into some of our experiments and investigations. It is very important to question how the world around you works, and to think about how you might investigate to find answers to those questions.
If you’d like to check out our class blog, you are very welcome. There will definitely be plenty of information there about our “Our World” project but I hope also to post more about science over the next couple of months, as my own expertise and ideas bank grow as a results of this STEM course and as the pupils’ enthusiasm for Science likewise expands…hopefully!
Well done to you all.
Keep up the great work.
Ms. Griffin.
10:32 pm on February 18th, 2014
Sorry, I almost forgot to post the link to our blog. It is: http://msgriffins3rdclass.edublogs.org/