During the month of May all S1 pupils took part in this exercise which was supported by staff across the school and by Construction Skills and the Institute of Civil Engineers.  There were 3 components to the activity.

• Motivational Presentation from a professional Engineer which raised awareness of engineers place in society then moved on to raise the issue of natural disaster – in this case a Hurricane in Honduras. This took place on Thursday 14 May

• Curricular Input – Thursday 14 – Wednesday 20 May. All lessons for S1 pupils during this week linked in some way to the idea of natural disaster and how we can help. Much of the focus was on the imaginary disaster in Honduras but this was linked to concern about real natural disasters of recent years .

• Activity Day Thursday 21 May.    All S1 pupils were off class for the day. They were split into teams of 6 and had to take part in 6 separate activities relating to the imaginary disaster. The activities were – 1.Building a Shelter in a limited time and with certain materials then seeing how dry it keeps them when a rainstorm is simulated. 2.Transporting Water using deficient equipment and having to traverse difficult terrain. 3.Carrying out Water Filtration and constructing Weather Instruments. 4.Bridge building exercise. 5.Food Preparation in testing circumstances. 6.Planning a solution to the crisis and then making a presentation of it to a member of the World Health Organisation

Teams gained points for each task with an overall winner. It also raised funds for the Make Poverty History group. The fund-raising was an attempt to link the fun activities which the pupils undertook to real-life situations of hardship thus making them more globally aware.

This exercise was a major success with all pupils both enjoying the day and developing an enlightened view of real third world problems and potential solutions

An extensive gallery of pics of the event is available on the following pages.  As ever, the images are in thumbnail format.  Click on any image to see a larger version.  Use the back arrow in your browser or the backspace key  to return to the gallery.