Thursday 25 February 2010

My colleague Stefan Frontczac, headteacher at Primrose Lane Primary School, Boston Spa, sent me this letter from Derek Gallamore his Year 6 Teacher...

"Dear Chris, I was reading your blog this week and noticed that you welcome news from schools. I would like to share and celebrate some exciting work my class have been undertaking recently. As part of a design project to design a 'House of the Future', we have made a link with an internationally renowned architectural practice based in London - Amanda Levete Architects (formerly, and more widely, known as Future Systems). www.amandalevetearchitects.comThe project started on Tuesday 12th January, when we video conferenced with an architect at Amanda Levete Architects (AL_A). The video-conferencing call lasted over an hour, with the architect talking to the children, showing them a PowerPoint to show how the design process and architects work. He talked to us about design and showed us lots of inspirational pictures. The architect then 'employed' the children as architects and gave them a brief to design a 'house of the future'.Over the last month the children have been really busy designing, writing, making models, playing with materials and exploring ideas in groups. Our work has touched many curriculum areas beyond art and design, including Literacy (e.g. writing booklets to accompany their designs), Numeracy (3D shapes, area, costings of buildings), ICT (control technology), PSHCE (sustainability, team-working) and science (e.g. materials). Having been invited to London by AL_A to present our designs and share our ideas, we are visiting London by train this Friday (26th February). Each group is to present to the architects in London verbally and using A1 graphical presentations which they have created. After visiting the architects on Friday morning, the children will be visiting the Media Centre at Lords Cricket Ground (designed by Future Systems) followed by a ride on the London Eye. There is no cost for this visit to either school or children - the Year 6 pupils and parents have raised over £2000 to fund the visit! Finally, our school badge is on Amanda Levete Architects website (alongside an article about work being exhibited at the Guggenheim museum in New York!) Thank you, Derek."

I am constantly amazed at the work talented colleagues are doing across Leeds to release the magic and the WOW factor.
Chris

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