Ignite curiosity, problem solving skills, and foster a sustainability mindset in your classes through repair skills
Why repair?
How can you ignite curiosity and foster problem-solving skills in your students? How can you incorporate sustainability, STEM and circular economy into your teaching?
One answer could be: repair skills.
That’s certainly what Team Repair believe in - and the data they are collecting on the impact of their repair kits progamme is proving them right - even after just one session.
- 46.7% of children have an increased interest in repair and confidence
- 30% of children had an increased interest in going into a STEM job
- 12.4% of children had an increased interest in a job that's good for the planet
Hands-on educational experiences help many young people discover that there is more than one way of being involved in STEM. A report from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers stresses the importance of personalising STEM teaching based on the 5 “tribes” of STEM learners. For some of them, experimentation and relating the learning to the real world is key to building their confidence in pursuing an education and career in STEM.
Bring repair into your classroom
One of the ways in which you can bring repair into your classroom is through a simple teardown activity. Even if you’ve not recently (or ever!) attempted to repair any broken gadgets, the teardown activity is a safe way of exploring and understanding how things work and fit together. That’s the first step to being able to diagnose problems and - yes - ultimately fixing things!
You can structure the activity around the 3 key questions:
- How does it work?
- What components is it made of?
- How is it made?
Start with asking the students about how something works. If it’s a radio, they may say that it needs to connect to a station, it needs to create sound, it needs to be able to switch on, etc. Then it’s interesting to connect these functions to the different components of the radio.
Download lesson plan
You can follow this step-by-step Product Teardown lesson plan from Team Repair:
Useful Resources
For more teardown activities and ideas you can visit one of these sites:
- iFixit Teardown Directory
- Restart Wiki Basic Electronic Components Identifier
- iFixit Electronics Repair Safety Best Practices
- Recycle Your Electricals: E-Waste Disposal Directory
Team Repair was founded by a team of engineers from Imperial College London. The Team Repair programme lets students get hands-on with real products, developing an intrinsic interest in how things work and exploring the KS2/KS3 Science and Design & Technology curriculum in a unique way. Within a 12-week programme, children learn how to mend their favourite electronic gadgets, from remote-controlled cars to game consoles. They’ve been featured in global media, including the World Economic Forum and the BBC.