PLANKS by Green Hat Workshop

Arriving at your school office an hour prior to the session, the Green Hat Workshop facilitator will sign in and then unload our collection 25 x 16kg boxes of PLANKS into the venue space. Participants arrive and receive a short curriculum linked presentation about shape and forces as well as building technique, and some ideas to open up the possibility of the PLANKS’ use; then, “You can build whatever you want, with whoever you want, using as many PLANKS as you want…”

The most valuable aspect of each workshop is this period of time, running for about an hour and a half, where participants are engaged in free, open ended play. During this time our facilitators work hard to open up the potential learning in the activity through informal demonstration, question and prompted reflection.

Following are the focus of some of the workshops we have facilitated.

• Whole school whole day series. A day of sessions where each year level (up to 100 participants at once) participate in a session. Prep/Foundation having only an hour, with minimal presentation and more play, sometimes shared with their grade 6 ‘buddy’. Often this can be a celebration of a new term or school year or its conclusion, or even to mark an event or day of science or mathematics.
• Single session. One class or year level as a stand-alone activity or the conclusion to a Humanities and Social Studies topic..
• STEAM or Mathematics Family Evening. Aften after a day of PLANKS workshops, families attend an evening hour-long session and students show their parents what engineering ideas they’ve learned during the day.