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A very popular, FREE, continuing professional development for teachers of Design & Technology, Maths, Science of key stages 2, 3 & 4

This full training day is usually hosted at Bournemouth & Poole College or Weymouth College. It's a hands-on workshop with individual exercises and a group project delivered by John Allen of INPUT, consultant trainer for ConstructionSkills. Included in the programme is

• introduction to modern architectural designs and discussion of structures, forces, materials and their properties used in construction
• hands-on activities building towers, domes, bridges and a working model of the London Eye by using a simple, low cost technique based on paper tubes, nuts and bolts
  
• ideas how these activities can be used with students of a wide range of age and abilities to promote understanding of aspects in the National Curriculum and development of key skills of problem-solving, team-working and communication.

The workshop enables teachers to construct tailored lessons, or long-term projects across Design & Technology, Maths, Science, Applied Arts, Geography, etc. Teachers are provided with a ‘starter pack’ to recreate the activities in the classroom, and information on further teaching resources and on careers in construction.

Those who attended the day would recommend this workshop to colleagues and find that this type of activity fits well into the curricula of Design & Technology and can be used in Maths, Science, Arts, as well as for key skills development.

Feedback from previous events
Every time we run this training day, we get excellent feedback from teachers. Teachers said, the most useful learning messages are:

"team work, cheap resource, availability of materials, different types of learning, valuing everyone's ideas, learning is practical and fun"

"The practical nature of all tasks which were easy to translate to the classroom. The cross curricular nature of the tasks."