Sarah Young, headteacher at Caldecote Church of England Academy, discusses the school’s visit to Shuttleworth in Bedfordshire, where they learned about the development of transport and spoke to an inventor.
As part of our drive to make the curriculum engaging and inspiring, we approached Shuttleworth to arrange a learning experience based on our theme of inventors and inventions. From the first contact, we knew the trip would provide us with exactly what we needed. We met with the learning coordinator and explained our exact requirements and we were certainly not disappointed!
As our school is so close to Shuttleworth, we arranged for 53 children from EYFS to Key Stage 2 to be taken straight there by their families in the morning.
From the moment we arrived, everything was so well organised. Parking was arranged for us so that our children could be dropped off safely and this is where we were met by the team who would be looking after us for the day. The visit was timetabled extremely well and each of our groups knew exactly what to do and when.
Our EYFS children went through to the hangar to look at a range of different cars and they learned about how they had changed over time. They were fascinated by the old cars and were amazed at how different they used to be. “Old cars didn’t have a roof… they would get really wet if it rained,” was one of the brilliant comments from the pupils.
A major highlight was for our oldest children, who were learning about how the invention of radar helped to win World War Two. I was curious about how this complex invention would be explained to the children in a meaningful way that they would understand, and I was amazed. The creativity displayed by the staff in helping our learners to understand how radar worked, and how this subsequently helped the war effort, was excellent. The children’s excitement as they got to try the radar demonstration, was palpable.
“I didn’t know that a radar did that and it must have been so good in the war. What an amazing invention!”
Year 4 pupil
Some of our children got to dress up in pilot uniforms, trying on goggles, helmets and jackets. They were quite surprised at how heavy the helmets and the jackets were and how difficult it was to see everything through the goggles.
One of the children’s favourite parts was talking to an inventor. Shuttleworth arranged for an actor to play the part of Dan Albone, an inventor from our local area. We all visited his workshop where he told us about the development of his bikes. The children were in awe of his inventions and found the idea of a ‘boneshaker’ bike really funny.
The opportunity to interact with characters and artefacts made this part of the day particularly memorable for the students and they were keen to tell their families about someone from their local area doing something so incredible.
The interaction between pupils and ‘Dan’ really brought the concept of inventing, reviewing, evaluating and reinventing to life in a way that the pupils could see and understand. This was a real spark of motivation for them.
Our children learned about how cars had changed over time. They were fascinated by the old vehicles on display and were amazed at how different they used to be.
We must not forget the vintage bus ride. The whole group got to have a ride on a double-decker bus around the Shuttleworth estate, accompanied by the boneshaker bike being ridden by ‘Dan’ alongside. It was an incredible experience for the children as they got to draw on their own experiences of school trip coaches, comparing the differences and how transport has developed over time.
We were very grateful to Shuttleworth, the education team and the quality of the volunteers, who were enthused and clearly very passionate about the collection. The group asked so many questions and were given such incredible, knowledgeable answers and experiences that couldn’t have been provided within the classroom.
We requested a bespoke package to suit our whole school being at Shuttleworth at the same time, with a particular focus on knowledge that we could use for non-fiction writing on our return to school, and Shuttleworth absolutely delivered. Visits to Shuttleworth have now become an integral part of our curriculum as we can see first-hand the educational impact and impression such an amazing trip has.
For more information about school trips to Shuttleworth, visit www.shuttleworth.org/learning.
