The Rapid Response Engineering Challenge (RREC) demonstrates a new method of communicating engineering principles to S1 school children, based on re-building a devastated country hit by a hurricane. All pupils are introduced to a scenario where they have to imagine they are engineers going to help people who have very little infrastructure left after the storm.
An inspirational introduction is given through an interactive presentation by a civil engineer. At the end of the presentation pupils are told that school will be ‘cancelled’ for the following one or two weeks while they are trained to be Rapid Response Engineers providing the basics of water, shelter, food, transportation and communication.
During the training time, subject departments work across the school curriculum on materials, developed by staff, which is linked to the hurricane theme. The S1 year group is divided into teams of six who work together in the subject areas with the lessons taking place during the normal school timetable. At the end of this time period, the pupils, still in their teams, work through four different bases during the activity day.
Motivational Talk
Activity Day
At two bases, pupils work together to make a shelter and transport water. The two other bases require the teams to identify who has the best skills to complete tasks in building weather instruments, orienteering in Spanish, building a water filtration system, creating healthy food and making a presentation to the World Health Organisation. Pupils, in their group, then raise funds for a charity that helps children in the developing world.
