Junior Technology Tournament 2024

The Rotary Club of Royal Wootton Bassett & District went along to Noremarsh Junior School in Royal Wootton Bassett recently at the invitation of Headteacher Hilary MacMeekin to run the Rotary Junior Technology Tournament. This was demonstrated at a ‘Big Bang’ fair at the NEC, the UK’s largest celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths for young people.

The tournaments are a challenging and enjoyable way for young people to enrich their STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) learning. They are designed for 8 – 11 year olds, and in partnership with The Rochester Bridge Trust, Rotary provide an interesting and fun experience that tests the knowledge, innovation, team working and problem solving skills of the participants. The tournaments have been granted a CREST (Creativity in Science and Technology) award by the British Science Association.

The children, working in teams of five, had to solve an interactive technology task and were required to design, model and build a solution with materials such as paper, card, clothes pegs, string and elastic rubber bands, using a premade wooden base, all supplied by Rotary free of charge.

At Noremarsh Junior School the task was to build a scale model of a bridge that would enable squirrels to cross a pathway in an environmentally friendly setting. The children’s success was ably demonstrated at the end of the tournament when, among the tests to find a winning team, fans were used to see whether the model squirrels would be blown off the bridge in a gale!

The whole of year 5 (80 children) took part over the course of two mornings. They were all fully engaged and enthusiastic throughout the sessions and the budding engineers set a high standard with their bridge building solutions. Gold and silver medals were awarded to the top two teams on each of the two mornings. The winning team on the first morning was ‘Team Messi’ and on the second morning ‘URFN’.

The enjoyment was amply shown by some of the other amusing names the children had selected for their teams such as ‘King Bob’, ‘Team Nuggies’ and ‘Snow Bunnies’.

Headteacher Hilary MacMeekin said ‘the children gained a lot from the event and we would love the Rotary Club to visit us again.’