Interactive Primary Newsletter 33 Pop-up Pals

The Kinross experience As part of Kinross Primary School’s review of their Environmental Studies programme, Primary Technology in Scottish Schools from LTS was introduced. A P4 class was chosen to pilot Pop-up Pals from this package as an activity for the middle stages. In her report, the class teacher pointed out that, usefully, the booklet supplied for this activity came complete with lesson notes, sheets for recording findings and a net for making the pop-up pals box. As with many of these types of activities, staff at the school found it difficult to assess whether pupils would actually be able to make something that would pop up. Acquiring suitable resources proved time-consuming and difficult but the class teacher felt that this task would be easier if the activity were to be repeated. It is also worth noting that more sessions than indicated in the notes were used, as the pupils had to try out different pop-up heads (Figure 1).                     Figure 1 - Some completed Pop-up Pals from Kinross          Figure 2 - Different pop-up mechanisms From the report we received, it was evident that the pupils loved the topic and had ended up with some very effective pop-up pals after experimenting with different strengths of box material, pop-up mechanisms and catches for the boxes (Figure 2). Encouragingly, they did not all end up choosing the same design or type of head. Indeed, their enthusiasm for the activity was so great that they went on to make a second pop-up based on their trial boxes, but this time with a Christmas pal inside. The cross-curricular links within this activity included: nets and measuring in maths; talking and listening, imaginative and functional writing in language; collaboration and working in groups in PSD and Powerpoint and borders in IT. Overall, the verdict from Kinross was that this was a very satisfactory topic for both pupils and teacher. Paper Pop-up design