Summary

I'm hoping to raise £1469 to buy Robotics Equipment for Computing and STEM extra curricular activities, providing students with an opportunity to engage with coding and STEM through implementing practical projects.

My students

The students at The Douay Martyrs are a pleasure to work with. The students are respectful of the Catholic values and ethos of the school (including those who are not Catholic themselves), and are intuitive, witty and enthusiastic. Unfortunately budgetary limitations make it hard to invest in extra-curricular activities.

My project

This project looks to build on an interest for STEM, particularly Computer Science within the Douay Martyrs School. Whilst the subject has taken off in recent years and is highly popular at GCSE and now A-Level, there is a lack of infrastructure and funding within the school to support extra curricular clubs that make use of robotics and other equipment. This project would invest in Lego Mindstorm kits to form a robotics club, with the hope to combine Computing, D&T, Maths and Science under a STEM umbrella.

The Lego Mindstorm kits allow for creativity whilst providing structured resources to support independent learning, and promote curiosity and challenge students through problem solving and logical thinking, providing real world context to their work in STEM subjects such as Computer Science.

The funding would support the purchase of a small number of Lego Mindstorms to allow small groups of students to engage in extra curricular clubs. This would be done for a period of time, with the hope that other students can then utilise the resources. Ideally over time support to invest in further Mindstorms would allow more students to attend the club simultaneously, and further increase the opportunities for Cross-Curricular STEM activities, as currently the 16 pupil pack that unites all STEM subjects is too expensive for the school to purchase as a one off cost ( https://education.lego.com/en-gb/products/ev3-classroom-solution-16-pupils/5004981 )

Where your donation goes

The donation would support the purchase of 3 Lego Mindstorms, with additional materials to invest in the Computer Science and D&T add-on, providing appropriate resources for these subjects to support the programme, and additional materials to allow further modification of the Lego Mindstorms.

3 x Basic EV3 Robot @ £383.99 each: which would support 6-9 students per half term: https://education.lego.com/en-gb/products/ev3-getting-started-set-2-pupils/5004966

1x Materials for D&T and Computer Science @ £287.99 each: https://education.lego.com/en-gb/products/ev3-add-on-computing-and-design-technology-set-2-pupils/5004970

Delivery charge: £0

Credit card fees (2%): £29 (to cover the fees charged by the payment provider)

Total cost: £1,469

Key stats

% of students on pupil premium at our school: 24%
Number of students this will benefit: 6-12 per half term (36-72 annually)
Age of students: 11-14

Help us reach our target!

Donations of any value are invaluable to helping us achieve our goal.

To help support us please spread the message, whether you can donate or not, please share this project with anyone you think would support us – on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, by email, telephone, or in conversation.

About Me

My name is Sam Alner (@samalner) and I am a Teach First Ambassador from the 2013 cohort. I studied Computer Science at the University of Southampton and was placed in the Douay Martyrs Catholic School in September 2013 due to the number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds and Hillingdon's status as a priority area within London.

When I arrived the school only taught ICT, but since I have become Head of Computing, and the school now runs Computer Science in KS3,KS4 (GCSE) and KS5 (A-Level). I am also heavily involved with Teach First, supporting its mission that no child's prospects should be determined by their socio-economic background.