Teachers support > Your challenges

Challenge support for teachers

Want to give your pupils a challenge?

Each one of our topic zones has two Challenges that you and your students can participate in. The challenges are designed to further your science teaching. By entering your responses you stand the chance of winning some fantastic Prizes, including money for your students and your school, you could even appear in one of our professionally filmed Faraday videos!

The challenges

Each of the challenges links to the curriculum and have been created so that they can be used as a lesson. The challenges are quick-thinking, problem solving activities that will link your classroom to the real world of science, offering you great potential for cross curricular work.

Upload your challenge submission onto the site as a short video clip of no more than 5 minutes long and compete with other schools to become the winner. Prizes will be awarded by the IET, but there will also be a people’s choice award to the clip with the most votes, so the more entertaining you make them the better!

The competition closes on 14^th December 2007. Please read the full Terms and conditions before entering.

Know your subject

The challenges are versatile. They are scientifically engaging activities which can be entered into either independently or alongside the rest of the resources. They are designed to complete your teaching about one of the topic zones and test your student’s problem solving and communication skills.

To get the most out of your challenge, we recommend that you prepare your students by doing at least one of the following:

Watch the video of your chosen topic online.
Run through one of the activities as an introduction to the subject area.
Explore the online quizzes or play the games.
Keep an eye on the competition by having a look at the other entries online.

All challenges are linked to the curricula. Check out the Teacher resources to find out more.

Get creative!

When it comes to putting your challenges together: think creatively. The judges are looking for inventive ideas that really tackle the issues and that demonstrate a knowledge of the basic science behind the proposed solution.

Get the creative juices flowing, brainstorm your approaches in class or get your pupils working in teams to come up with a variety of solutions.

Think like an engineer! Come up with imaginative solutions to solve problems with the resources available. If you approach the challenges creatively then the judges will reward you!

Practice makes perfect

When it comes to putting your video entries together make sure you prepare your students well. We have put a page of Presentation tips together to help you out.

It doesn’t have to be Hollywood quality, but the submissions need to be audible and entertaining. Remember other people will be voting online for you so practice beforehand to avoid umm-ing and err-ing.

Have fun!

Most of all, the challenges have been designed to get students thinking about real-world science and answering intriguing questions that take them outside of the classroom.

The science and technology involved may sometimes be mind-boggling, but it’s always exciting. If you have fun putting the challenges together it will come across in your submissions.