Engaging Pupils: An A Level student describes her experience of collaborative working with Key Stage 2.

When the students at Thamesview Vocational Centre found out we were working with the local junior school, Riverview Primary, we were quite surprised. We had been working on the Engaging Places project which was a brief to redesign Riverview library. We had already looked at the design of the building, and the place where the library was going to be.

We had spoken to a few local residents and a librarian at the library itself. We were then told by our teacher that we were going to work with the children at Riverview Primary school. Although some of us have younger brothers or sisters, we wouldn't normally work in a school environment with students that young. At first not everyone was keen to work with them as we hadn't done anything like this before.

Later that week we went up to the school during the lunch hour to meet the children. At first the 8 of us older students stood together and didn't really want to interact but our teacher and Mrs Dymond, the head teacher at Riverview Junior, told us to split up and pick a table. I went to the table full of girls as I could see that they had a lot of work ready to show.