This afternoon’s Wacky Rally was the culmination of six weeks of hard work for the Willow Brook designers. Using our knowledge of Newton’s Laws of Motion, teamwork, determination and with a lot of inspiration from the Wacky Races cartoon, 21 selected teams brought their powered vehicles to the track for the final showdown. The children were judged using three criteria…
The first was their design – the aesthetics of the vehicle and the personality of the matching driver.
The second category was based on the distance/power gained when the vehicle completed its test drive.
The third was all about the presentation and design board, a speech which took the audience from initial concepts to the finished articles.
The children learned a new word… iteration. It’s a word that’s at the heart of the design technology process, and means that to get to the final product you have to keep going back to the drawing board and making adjustments until you reach your goals.
The vehicles were impressive… The racers were enthusiastic… The design boards were clever… It was a great day at the races and a superb conclusion to our whole-school topic. Tomorrow the children will find out who has gained a place on the podium. (And I can tell you that it’s a photo finish!)
