Bringing engineering to life in the classroom

We’re excited to share Maziak’s involvement in the Primary Engineer Programmes.  We’ve been involved on two levels, firstly in terms of offering funding support to help facilitate the running of the programmes and secondly, one of our Engineers volunteered to participate in one of the Programmes at a Cambridgeshire school.  

https://www.primaryengineer.com
Primary Engineer is a non-profit organisation that runs a range of engineering-based coursed.  They bring together teachers and engineers to engage primary and secondary pupils with engineering through projects mapped to the curriculum.  Engineers provide real-world context to activities, bringing classroom maths and science learning to life through engineering.  For primary children, they have developed two age-relevant engineering projects, one involves building a shoebox vehicle and the second involves building an electric vehicle.

Matt Howard joined Maziak in July 2013 as an Apprentice Engineer and qualified in 2015.  He is a valued member of the Maziak team, with extensive technical skills combined with a calm, friendly and professional demeanour.  He volunteered himself for this great initiative and earlier this year spent two days at Buckden Primary School in St Neots working with the Reception and Year 4 classes.  Reception tackled the shoebox car challenge, ending in a race to see which vehicle would go straightest and furthest.  The Year 4s were educated by Matt on pulleys and gear ratios and worked on building the electric vehicle, with slightly more sophisticated raw materials. Their race was also judged on how straight and how far the vehicles travelled.   

Feedback from Matt on the overall experience was wholly positive.  “The children were very excited to have me - a stranger - in the classroom and their enthusiasm was tangible.  Keeping young kids on task and focused is a new skill for me and very different to my day to day working environment but really rewarding.  The most positive aspect of the whole experience was the buzz and sense of achievement at race time, which was infectious.”

Maziak is now actively working with Primary Engineer to promote the programme in Northamptonshire, our home county.

For more information, please call 01933 222000 or email us at enquiries@maziak.co.uk

Bringing engineering to life in the classroom