New
New
Year 1

Bridges

I know what bridges are used for and can spot some important features in their design.

New
New
Year 1

Bridges

I know what bridges are used for and can spot some important features in their design.

These resources will be removed by end of Summer Term 2025.

Switch to our new teaching resources now - designed by teachers and leading subject experts, and tested in classrooms.

These resources were created for remote use during the pandemic and are not designed for classroom teaching.

Lesson details

Key learning points

  1. Bridges are built for different purposes.
  2. Bridges are built and designed by engineers.
  3. Bridges have different shapes within their structure.
  4. Sketching helps us to spot details and features.

Keywords

  • Engineer - a person who designs and builds things

  • Bridge - a structure that helps people to cross something, such as water, railway or another road

  • Structure - a structure is something that is made for a purpose, something that is formed and holds its shape

  • Stable - something is in place and will not fall over

  • Strong - something that is strong is harder wearing, will not break as easily

Common misconception

Bridges are only found over water.

There are different types of bridges, some carry people (footbridge), others allow vehicles to cross over water, roads or railways, some bridges carry trains and others carry boats (aqueduct).


To help you plan your year 1 design and technology lesson on: Bridges, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...

Children should look at a range of photographs of bridges and ideally look at local bridges too. When teachers model sketching skills, encourage children to use a light pencil stroke for the outline, adding detail by focusing on small areas of the sketch at a time.
Teacher tip

Equipment

Range of bridge pictures (including local bridge photos / visit a local bridge), worksheet, pencils, crayons.

Content guidance

  • Risk assessment required - equipment

Supervision

Adult supervision required

Licence

This content is © Oak National Academy Limited (2025), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).

Lesson video

Loading...

4 Questions

Q1.
What is this?
An image in a quiz
a hill
Correct answer: a bridge
a park
a path
a house
Q2.
Which of these might you use to cut shapes in paper?
ruler
Correct answer: scissors
pencil
Q3.
True or false? We can use glue to join paper together.
Correct answer: true
false
Q4.
What does the word build mean?
Correct answer: to put something together
to take something apart

4 Questions

Q1.
True or false? A structure is the person who designs and makes bridges.
true
Correct answer: false
Q2.
Match these words to their meaning.
Correct Answer:structure,the structure of an object is how it is formed

the structure of an object is how it is formed

Correct Answer:strong,something that is strong is harder wearing, will not break as easily

something that is strong is harder wearing, will not break as easily

Correct Answer:stable,something is in place and will not fall over

something is in place and will not fall over

Q3.
Bridges are built for different uses.
Correct answer: true
false
Q4.
What are the important features of a bridge?
Correct answer: strong
long
Correct answer: stable
tall
Correct answer: stand by themselves

Additional material

Download additional material