Tips and training

Preparing for the session

• All the materials are ready to pick up and use, but do adapt them as much as you like to suit your students and teaching style. 
• Give the science practicals a go in advance. If this isn’t possible, make sure you or your technician can set them up beforehand. 
• Build a community: If your students don’t know each other well yet a quick warm up question to kick off the task can be useful. This can be general, with questions like: ‘If you could have a superpower what would it be?’ Or something more specific such as asking them to share the skills or knowledge they have to help them pick roles. 
• Monitor progress, time and noise: Break up activities to help build in stages of the activity and keep all groups on task. Most of our group tasks are short and broken down already. Use a timer to keep on track – this should be visible to the students. Sites such as Bouncy Balls show a visual representation of noise levels in the classroom. 
• The lessons include group work as we know teamworking skills are important for students to be ready for the world of work. Collaboration and different viewpoints are key to solving complex problems when working in engineering and sustainability careers. 
• Exercises have ample tasks for students in the group. Each student should have a similar amount of work and responsibility. 
• The tasks set out how teamworking relates to a workplace, such as respect and sharing workload. You may want to add to these. 
• Our tasks make clear to the students what the outcomes should be.