Whilst some are counting down the days until the half term break, hundreds of teachers from across the country are busy preparing to start their first week back with a bang (and it’s got nothing to do with fireworks!).
From 2 – 6 November it’s ‘Tomorrow’s Engineers Week‘, a brilliant opportunity to show your students what being an engineer is all about.
Why do we need a week about engineering?
Engineering UK has projected that the UK needs to double the number of engineering apprentices and graduates entering the industry to meet the growing demand for engineers (Engineering UK, State of Engineering 2005).
What can schools do?
The list of activities that you can do to make engineering come alive for your students are endless. Here are a few to get you started:
- celebrate the work of engineers in tutor time or assembly with this resource from Tomorrow’s Engineers explaining what engineering is or one of our community resources uploaded onto the resource library ‘what is engineering?’
- request for a guest speaker to come into school and talk about their life as an engineer by contacting ‘STEM Ambassadors‘
- arrange for an online guest speaker to talk to your class using skype classroom or Google Hangout
- plan a visit to a local engineering site. This resource may be useful when considering the health and safety requirements for leaving the school site
- run an engineering activity as part of your lessons with one of the humanitarian engineering resources from Practical Action
- run an after-school / lunch time engineering challenge using ideas from theTomorrow’s Engineers activity pack
To help coordinate activities across the country, the Tomorrow’s Engineers website has a Mission Inspiration map where you can search for local events or register your own event for others to see.
There are also some other fantastic opportunities to give students a real insight into the engineering world.
If you are a secondary teacher and would like to know more about engineering careers but have never worked in the industry, take a look at the Teacher Industrial Partners’ Scheme (TIPS). The scheme partners a local STEM employer with your school through a one or two week work placement and bespoke CPD package. Placements are happening across the country for teachers from all STEM subjects.
If you are a primary teacher and would like more ideas about how to include engineering in your school, there is a bursary funded CPD activity happening at the National Science Learning Centre in July 2016.