Monday, October 10, 2016

Return of The Brilliant Club

What better way to spend a Sunday than in teacher training?!
A new university teaching term means another term working with The Brilliant Club delivering uni-style tutorials in schools. This term is especially fun: I'm working with Key Stage 2 students, i.e. ten-year-olds. 
The Brilliant Club has us create our own courses based on our PhD work for older students, but for younger ones, we work from a pre-designed curriculum we can adapt a bit to suit our interests and expertise. 
I get to have fun with "The Deep, Dark Woods", an exploration of nature and literature. We will be looking at excerpts from things like "The Gruffalo" and "Harry Potter". I'm quite tickled, all in all. 
Yesterday I also went along to an elective exploring a new course created by the Engineering Outreach programme at University College London. The course is "How Many Engineers Does It Take to Make an Ice Cream?" and examines the various processes in mass production. The final assignment requires students to design a new ice cream - and the winning flavour is going to be made by Unilever for their class to try! I'm not sure whether I'll deliver that course this term (though I may, as it looks like they're short a tutor), but it was fun and gave me some teaching ideas for the Bright Futures programme at Holt Hall either way. 
This will be my first term working long-haul in the classroom with students this young - usually with the kiddos I either am outside at a camp or do one-time events! It will be interesting to see how I fit into this new style. 

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