{"id":7236,"date":"2022-07-01T13:20:15","date_gmt":"2022-07-01T13:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/?p=7236"},"modified":"2022-07-01T13:20:15","modified_gmt":"2022-07-01T13:20:15","slug":"the-university-as-a-lending-service-stem-learning-with-lego","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/2022\/07\/01\/the-university-as-a-lending-service-stem-learning-with-lego\/","title":{"rendered":"The university as a lending service \u2013 STEM learning with Lego"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/h2>\n

Dan James: Daniel.james@reading.ac.uk<\/a><\/p>\n

Institute of Reading<\/p>\n

Overview<\/h1>\n

The case study will describe a TLEP (Teaching and Learning Enhancement Project) to develop STEM teaching and learning.\u00a0 Over 400 Reading Partnership student teachers (RPTs) have received some training, which was well received in university sessions.\u00a0 This case study will also describe how the programmable Lego kits were used successfully with 60 children who visited the university during their science week, as well as discussing future plans.<\/p>\n

Objectives<\/h1>\n

The aims for the TLEP were:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • To provide the students the skills, resources and confidence within university to deliver cross-curricular STEM activities whilst on their school placement, either in lessons and \/ or as an after-school club.<\/li>\n
  • To promote and model cross-curricular working within a module and collaborative working within the community.<\/li>\n
  • To maximise the use of expensive resources and to demonstrate \u2018proof-of-concept\u2019 that lending of resources to partnership schools is viable.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Context<\/h1>\n

    The majority of the incoming primary teaching ITT (Initial Teacher Training) students do not take STEM A-levels and lack confidence teaching STEM in schools. Over the course of the teacher training programme, knowledge in the individual subjects improves.\u00a0 However, due to the siloed nature of university module teaching, students do not always see the cross-curricular opportunities to teach the subjects, nor have the confidence to deliver STEM initiatives, especially design and engineering challenges to children. With an ever-increasing shortage of a skilled STEM workforce, promoting STEM skills in children from a primary age is important for the future of Britain\u2019s economy (ASPIRES project, 2013). One major barrier to achieving this goal is schools having the finances to purchase equipment.\u00a0 Even if schools have access to the necessary resources, they can often be used once and then lost in the back of the store cupboard.\u00a0 Further barriers include teachers having the necessary skills and confidence to deliver these sessions.<\/p>\n

    Implementation<\/h1>\n

    By modelling working in a cross-curricular fashion and exposing students to carrying out the activity experientially, the aim was to upskill the RPTs (Reading Partnership student teachers) in their skills and confidence to deliver these types of STEM projects in their training placements and in their future schools.<\/p>\n

    Funding from the TLEP was used to purchase 10 Lego Spike Prime kits which provided sufficient resources for a class set both for use in university science teaching sessions, and with schools, where class numbers are approximately 30 children.\u00a0 By the university purchasing the resources and making them available for lending through the Learning Hub at London Road, the barrier in terms of resource cost to schools using these kits (~\u00a3300 per box new) was therefore eliminated.<\/p>\n

    The ambition was that after the workshop session as part of their university course, the Reading Partnership Teachers (student teachers) would then be inspired to borrow the kits and use with their own classes.\u00a0 However, the use of practical resources was severely hampered by covid-19, so the anticipated impact was reduced, and the timescale delayed.<\/p>\n

    But as part of a \u2018Science Week\u2019 in May 2022, a partnership school was invited to the science teaching labs on the London Road Campus.\u00a0 The children from a years 5 and 6, took part in a session to build 2 different motorizable grabber arms, and evaluated which was the best grabber to pick up different plastics in a plastic recycling sorting facility.<\/p>\n

    Impact<\/h1>\n

    Aim 1:\u00a0 The university session provided the students the skills, resources and confidence, as evidenced by module reviews and overhearing many of the university students saying, \u201cthat was really fun!\u201d.\u00a0 It also gave them the chance to work together and problem-solve groups, developing relationships amongst the cohort.<\/p>\n

    Aim 2:\u00a0 By inviting a school into the university\u2019s science teaching lab, we met the aim of working collaboratively with the local community, meeting the aims of the Community, Engagement\u00a0 and Sustainability strands of the University Strategy. The children very much enjoyed this with them rating the session 9 or 10, out of 10.<\/p>\n

    Aim 3:\u00a0 This aim was to maximise the use of expensive resources and demonstrate\u00a0 that this is an option when working in partnership with schools.\u00a0 The fact that this work has already been used by 400 university children and 50 children, the means that the cost per participant is now down to approximately \u00a35, based on the purchase cost of \u00a32500.\u00a0 As further students and children, use these resources this cost per participant will further reduce.<\/p>\n

    Reflection<\/h1>\n

    This was a good first good start to supporting delivery of these cross-curricular STEM sessions with a physical computing component. Part of this aim was also to model cross-curricular working within a module with the computing training happening in computing sessions.\u00a0 Due to covid-19 disrupting the delivery of both the science and computing sessions, this was not as well implemented as initially hoped.<\/p>\n

    Further confidence and awareness in how these kits can be used would be beneficial to support increased implementation in schools, both for the trainee teachers and for experienced teachers mentoring them.<\/p>\n

    Follow Up<\/h1>\n

    I am aiming to train experienced teachers in using the kits, to ensure even greater impact and support for our RPTs on school placements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    How the IoE trained primary teaching students in using Lego Spike Prime kits as tools for delivering STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) learning. This was based on models of \u2018training the trainer\u2019 and \u2018resource lending\u2019 for maximum efficiency of resources.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":184,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[9,89,14],"tags":[616,135,57],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7236"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/184"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7236"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7237,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7236\/revisions\/7237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/t-and-l-exchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}