How can the topic of housing be made interesting and relevant to twelve year-olds? Simple really, throw in some imagination, creativity and a challenge! Year 7 students at the Wren Academy explored treehouses and island survival scenarios all in the cause for learning about housing design.
A student's street housing design from the My space, my base, my place project © CABE
CABE worked with the Wren Academy and architectural practice Harry Dobbs Design to design and lead an innovative teaching project which asked students to explore different scales of home environments – their personal space, their family base and their community place.
Learning from the built environment
Teacher Ronnie Smylie explains how the My space, my base, my place project worked, ‘We started by introducing the students to the space most familiar to them – their bedroom – asking them to measure and draw plans of the space.’ In later sessions the students explored their home and then the wider neighbourhood. At every stage students reviewed the current set-up and then worked on a “survival” scenario (tree house, tower block and island) where they had to think about the most important elements in each environment.
‘I believe the built environment offers really exciting opportunities for teaching and learning,’ says architectural practitioner Harry Dobbs. ‘The topic transcends the boundaries of subject areas and makes learning real and relevant by linking it to everyday life and experiences.’
Greg Epps of Harry Dobbs Design goes on to say, ‘Starting at a small scale with “my space” enabled the students to build up an architectural language before going on to think about the built environment on a bigger scale.’
Strong curriculum links
My space, my base, my place was developed to complement the new secondary curriculum for key stage three. CABE education advisor Laura Broderick says: ‘The project takes the broader theme of housing, makes it relevant to young people’s own experiences and builds links across a wide range of subjects and skills.’ Laura continued, ‘It offers teachers a great opportunity to investigate an interesting and accessible topic with their students – and to introduce challenge and imagination into lessons.’
The project worked around a busy school timetable and developed students’ personal learning and thinking skills (PLTS). Students appreciated the variety of resources used throughout the sessions and found that the group work helped them to be more adventurous when developing ideas.
Although the project was designed with Wren Academy’s built environment specialism in mind, it could easily be put into practice in other settings. Ronnie Smylie says, ‘We applied the project across the humanities but you could also deliver it as a cross-curricular project, pulling out strands from geography, citizenship, maths and art and design technology – there’s a lot of scope for tailoring the sessions to different curriculum requirements. We even incorporated the project into a where our students spent a day exploring environmental issues.’
A student's work from the My space, my base, my place project © CABE
Making creativity an integral part of learning
‘My space, my base, my place enabled us to make creativity an integral part of the learning process,’ comments Ronnie Smylie. ‘The survival scenarios really caught the students’ imagination, as did an exercise where they came up with designs for treehouses. The students responded extremely well to the emphasis on creative thinking – they were excited by the project and showed a real focus and engagement throughout the sessions.’
Greg Epps of Harry Dobbs Design was also impressed by the level of engagement shown by the students. ‘Some of the tasks we asked the students to complete were quite difficult. We asked them to use their hands and feet to measure a room and then produce a scale drawing – the combination of maths and proportion requires quite a lot of skill. It was great to see how engaged the students were and how much skill they demonstrated.’
Student feedback
Getting feedback from the students was an important part of the project. One student commented: ‘It really helped me to get to know more about buildings,’ while another said: ‘It has opened my eyes to the places I live around and showed me that a community does matter.’
Students also had an opportunity to give feedback on how the programme could be improved in the future. Ronnie Smylie says: ‘One of the things they highlighted was that it would be useful to visit buildings as part of the project and this is something we may be able to plan into future programmes.’
Where next
Throughout the summer term Wren Academy will replicate the project and deliver it independently with the rest of the year seven humanities classes at school. CABE, in consultation with the Wren Academy, plan to review the content from this pilot and hope to produce a resource for other teachers to access and adapt for the next academic year.
Further information
For further information please contact Laura Broderick, Education advisor at CABE: lbroderick@cabe.org.uk.
