Our year 13 primary lab LEGO ambassadors welcomed 60 primary school students from Ellen Wilkinson Primary School to deliver a workshop about ocean habitats and reefs. Our amazing LEGO learners include; Jericho, Fatima, Tahsin, Salwa, Gabija, Amaan and Sohail. 

LEGO is used across the college in countless ways both in the classroom and as extra-curricular activities. The LEGO innovation programme is divided into four labs; the play lab, the professional lab, the primary lab and the projects lab. The learners in the primary lab are trained to design, develop and teach workshops focused on tackling global issues.  

The session began with a ‘do now’ exercise where students were asked to think about what excites them in the ocean. This exercise led to exciting discussions, as the students shared their knowledge and opinions on the ocean. The discussions moved onto to exploring why the ocean is important to our planet and us as humans. Our learners did an excellent job keeping the attention of 60 primary school children and managed facilitating productive and fun discussions.  

After learning about reefs and their importance, our primary school visitors finally let loose on the LEGO! The task was to create a model to show what damage they think humans are causing to the reefs. Again, our learners demonstrated great skills as they guided the primary school students through this exploratory activity making sure to cultivate the young minds’ imaginations through meaningful conversations.  
Next, the students were tasked to use LEGO to model an artificial reef. Artificial reefs can be made from wood, rocks metal, concrete. These materials clustered together which causes algae, seaweed and some plants to attach themselves and eventually form an artificial reef. Although many of the primary school students had not previously heard of artificial reefs, they enthusiastically grasped the task and were excited to create their models. In the process of this exploratory and active learning experience, our visitors not only enjoyed themselves but became aware of the value of our oceans and reefs.  

The session was concluded by Jericho who spoke about all the different jobs there in marine industry. In years to come, this LEGO workshop run by our learners may be the reason for the next great Geologist, Engineer, Marine Biologist, Environmentalist or Ecologist! 

Year 13 learner and primary lab member shared the purpose and value of these workshops, ‘I joined the primary lab to teach children about our environment, STEM and Engineering. I think today went well but we can still improve- after every primary lab workshop, I feel we learn more as a team about organising and teaching. It exciting as we are always improving! The highlight of the day (and its always the highlight whenever I do these sessions) is those moments when a child’s eyes light up when they have learnt something new or when they are describing the amazing ideas behind their LEGO models.’ 

Thanks to the students from Ellen Wilkinson Primary School who were extremely attentive and worked well in their teams to produce some amazing models. We are excited to welcome you back to LDE UTC in the near future! 

'I was very pleased to see how the class crafted their group projects to meet the brief set,  as they were very engaged with the theory, and its associated studies. I really enjoyed seeing how they came up with their own ideas to test Piaget’s work through mini experiments and how this led to thoughtful questions and opened their thinking about the world of research,' psychology teacher Shafina.