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Teaching Ideas for Let’s Build a Boat for Year 1

Teaching ideas for Let’s Build a Boat by Jane Godwin. Explore teamwork, design, testing, and engineering in fun Year 1/2 literacy and STEM lessons.

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Steven Huynh
Let's Build a Boat, talk for reading, teamwork, friendship, design and technologies.

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About Let’s Build a Boat

Let’s Build a Boat by Jane Godwin is a joyful picture book that captures the excitement of children coming together to create something with their own hands. The story follows a group of kids who dream of building their very own boat, planning, gathering essential tools, and working as a team to bring it to life.

Through playful rhymes and vibrant illustrations, the book highlights the fun of designing, making, and testing a creation, while also showing how challenges, such as a crashing wave, can be part of the adventure.

This book is an excellent springboard into hands-on classroom projects that link strongly with the Design and Technology curriculum for Years 1/2, where students can plan, design, and build their own simple boats.

Why Let’s Build a Boat Supports Children’s Development

The story’s simple language makes it highly accessible for Year 1 readers, allowing them to follow along easily and practise fluency. Its clear structure and rhyme patterns also support literacy development.

At this stage, children love hands-on activities and performative designs, where they can see their ideas come to life. By building their own boats, students can experience the development process, from planning and making to testing and improving their design.

The book also models collaborative benefits, showing children that teamwork is often the key to success. As students are still developing fine motor skills, learning to ask for help is essential, and the text provides excellent examples of how cooperation makes the project more enjoyable.

Literary Features to Explore in the Classroom

  • Main Themes: Joy of making, persistence, friendship, and teamwork.
  • Setting: The children’s environment influences their boat-making and the natural challenge of the waves.
  • Characters: Each child takes on roles, shares jobs, and demonstrates persistence throughout the making process.
  • Language: Rhyming words and topic-specific vocabulary (e.g., “to-and-fro,” “tip”) build students’ word knowledge.
  • Text structure: The story reads like a narrative but also reflects the stages of procedure writing, helping children understand sequencing and steps in a process.

Teaching Ideas for Years 1/2 – Linking Reading and Design

Teachers can integrate Let’s Build a Boat into a Talk for Reading (T4R) unit alongside Design and Technologies. This creates a balance of reading comprehension and hands-on design skills. Here’s an sample unit:

By the end of the unit, students may be able to:

  • Recognise that creating things is fun, and teamwork helps make it possible.
  • Identify similarities and differences between boats in different texts.
  • Justify their opinions by making personal connections and referring to the story.
  • Understand the development process: planning, choosing materials, following steps, and revising.
  • Justify their own boat or raft design, linking its features to the text.

This approach not only strengthens comprehension but also develops design thinking, problem-solving, and early engineering skills.

Classroom Activities for Let’s Build a Boat

Here are some practical ways to bring the book into your lessons:

  • Boat Design Challenge: Provide simple materials (e.g., cardboard, sticks, paper, tape) and let students create their own boats, then test them in water.
  • Teamwork Reflection: Discuss how the characters shared tasks and how students can do the same.
  • Vocabulary Hunt: Explore rhyming and topic-specific words in the text, encouraging students to use them in writing.
  • Procedure Writing: Use the planning stages in the book as a model for writing step-by-step instructions.

Conclusion

Jane Godwin’s Let’s Build a Boat is more than a story. It’s a teaching resource that combines the joy of literacy with the creativity of design. Its simple language, themes of teamwork, and hands-on appeal make it an ideal choice for Year 1/2 classrooms.

By using the book as a springboard for Design and Technology activities, teachers can encourage students to read, design, test, and reflect on their own projects. This balance of story, development, and practical exploration ensures children not only enjoy reading but also discover the collaborative and creative rewards of making something together.

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The Book

Let’s Build A Boat

Let’s Build A Boat

Written by Jane Godwin, illustrated by Meg Rennie, published by Little Hare Books

This inspiring picture book celebrates teamwork, creativity, and determination. As a group of children come together to build a boat for their picnic on an island, the story naturally lends itself to discussions about the purpose of a boat in general and context of the text (AC9TDE2K01 – Years 1 and 2, Design and Technologies). The story also highlights the importance of preparation before they begin (AC9TDE2P01 – Years 1 and 2, Design and Technologies), innovation and problem-solving when they face the challenge at sea (AC9TDE2P03 – Years 1 and 2, Design and Technologies).

Throughout their journey, they experience challenges and moments of joy, allowing students to reflect on how they manage emotions in different situations (AC9HP2P03 – Years 1 and 2, Health and Physical Education). The story also supports children in understanding how teamwork, resilience, and problem-solving help them to achieve shared goals (AC9HP2P01 – Years 1 and 2, Health and Physical Education).

Let’s Build a Boat is a perfect launchpad for hands-on STEM or creative projects, as well as social-emotional learning discussions around collaboration, effort, and celebrating differences.

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