Lister face the dragons and win

Lister Infant School are celebrating after winning first prize at a Dragons’ Den inspired competition run by Liverpool Learning Partnership (LLP) for their Food Frenzy game app.

In July, pupil representatives from 14 Liverpool schools stepped up to face the ‘dragons’ in the LLP Year of Engineering inspired Dragons’ Den competition.

This year, students were asked to identify areas of maths teaching/learning which could be improved and to create an invention or design that would help to support maths in the classroom.

Pupils from a range of primary, secondary and special schools presented their maths-based designs to both their peers and a board of education and business professionals.

Presented designs ranged from an environmentally friendly pencil case with in-built maths resources (fraction wall, conversion tables etc), to apps and games designed to allow pupils to practice their maths skills.

Pupils presented their work formally but then had the opportunity to take part in a ‘marketplace’ where they could find out more about each other’s designs and ask their own questions of the other teams.

The standard of the work entered and presented was extremely high and it was incredibly difficult for the dragons to reach a consensus but eventually the winning schools were chosen.

Headteacher Mrs Janet Davies, said: “Our Years’ 1 and Year 2 children worked hard in after school club in the planning and design stages for the competition. They then used their skills to design a prototype of the app in Scratch, a programming language, where children can program and share interactive media.

“The dragons loved their pitch and their rap to market the app, which resulted in us being the primary school winner and we were up against 15 schools which made it a very tough competition”.