Marvel Legends Join Forces To Inspire Next Generation
The Government’s Year of Engineering campaign has teamed up with iconic comic brand Marvel, to launch a set of fun educational resources to help KS2 students aged 7-11 identify the super hero qualities needed to solve the global challenges we face. And it features a wealth of inspiration for keeping kids busy and entertained over the Christmas Holidays. The exciting new More Heroes Needed Marvel resources, which feature iconic favourites such as The Hulk, Black Panther, The Wasp and Iron Man can be found in the schools hub of the Year of Engineering website at www.yearofengineering.gov.uk/lesson-ideas and include: § An aptitude test that helps young people identify which super hero they share the most aptitudes with, and how these would suit a career in engineering § Real life super hero case studies featuring the aspirational stories of engineers § A curriculum linked lesson to facilitate teachers running the super hero session including a fun classroom activity with role play challenges The free Marvel resources aim to challenge engineering stereotypes, encourage a re-evaluation of gender roles in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) careers and showcase to young people that they have what it takes to be real world super hero engineers, playing a vital role in tackling complex global issues. By taking the super hero aptitude test and then playing the role play activities, young people are encouraged to identify and practice the skills and talents they share with their favourite super heroes that would also make them the engineers of tomorrow – skills such as resilience, resourcefulness, collaboration and curiosity. Nusrat Ghani, Minister for the Year of Engineering said: “The characters who inhabit the Marvel universe are famed for achieving amazing things against all odds; something engineers do on a daily basis. “Whether it’s tackling the problems of climate change, helping to provide clean water and energy in developing nations or using technology to help us live healthier, more independent lives, the engineering profession is full of its very own super heroes. “I’m certain these resources will encourage many young people to look again at their own amazing abilities and realise that, while they may never possess the strength of The Hulk, they could one day move mountains as an engineer.” Since the start of 2018, the government has worked with more than 1,400 partners from Apple and LEGO, to FIFA and The Science Museum to help young people take a closer look at engineering. The aim of the campaign is to encourage more young people from a wider range of backgrounds to discover the opportunities offered by engineering careers. Over the course of 2018 young people have been engaging with a varied range of Year of Engineering free and exciting events, resources and challenges. Research carried out after the first six months of the campaign shows the percentage of 7-11 year olds who would consider a career in engineering has increased by a significant 36 per cent since 2017. The new Marvel More Heroes Needed test is part of a wide range of free resources for teachers and parents on the Year of Engineering website, which also features a wealth of inspiration for keeping kids busy and entertained over the Christmas Holidays. For more super hero inspiration go to: www.yearofengineering.gov.uk/schools or www.yearofengineering.gov.uk/activitieszone
Ready-made lesson plans and worksheets
Wand Education is a new teaching platform developed for both primary and secondary schools, that was trialled by West Exe and Cranbrook Schools in Exeter. Wand is an education tool that provides teachers with quick and efficient means to access or edit quality ready-made lesson plans and worksheets. It is adaptable to any type of content and schools can, if they wish, upload their own schemes of learning and power them by Wand. Wand Education is working with a variety of content providers and when launched it will already have high-quality content within it including a phonics, history and geography scheme of learning – the latter two linked to the AQA syllabus for GCSE. Key features of Wand include: • Reuse, edit or create own lesson plans Teachers can reuse and edit premium content, upload their own schemes of learning, search for activities created by other teachers or reliable authors and publishers, or create their own content using 20+ pre-built activity templates, with all lesson plans mapped on learning objectives. • Project or deliver to student groups Teachers can either project a lesson or send it to an entire class, or to a group of students, making it easy for teachers to differentiate instruction according to student ability. • Engaging worksheets Wand Education provides teachers with a worksheet template that replicates the paper-based worksheet, while adding the benefits of the digital technology on top of it. • Get actionable data on student progress 67% of teachers complain on the quality of student progress reports[1], with most tools providing either simplistic or data-heavy reports. Wand Education provides teachers with visual reports on student progress and actionable data that need to be addressed for students to improve their work. Teachers get live overview on student progress, with options to grade and annotate open-ended answers in a similar fashion to the paper-based activities. And they can download a printable report which includes both an aggregated set of analytics with student activity and areas that need to be improved, as well as the actual activities performed by the student, with answers, marking and teacher annotations. For more information on Wand Education’s lesson plans and worksheets, just go to wand.education 1 http://www.teachersknowbest.org/reports/making_data_work