STEPS Engineers Week 2022 takes place from Saturday 5 - Friday 11 March. The STEPS Team is calling on engineers and engineering organisations at this time to consider ‘Adopting a Local School’ for either a digital, in-school, or in-house (i.e., in your organisation) visit.
To support engineers in this endeavour, the STEPS Team has collated a list of items to help engineers and companies with any advance planning. These are listed below, click the link to jump to the relevant part of this page.
Support organisers to plan and carry out their own engineering activities with children in their classrooms and local communities.
Help empower organisers to communicate effectively about engineering with children.
Providing engineering organisations with guides, tools, and training videos on how to adopt a local school for an in-school, in-organisation, or online digital visit.
Providing organisers with hands on engineering activities to carry out with primary and secondary school children.
STEPS Engineers Week activities should show off what engineering is to young people. This is the only requirement from STEPS – otherwise the sky is the limit!
Do you need any activity idea? STEPS has collated a list of activities that you might like to carry out. These can be found below. If you have another engineering activity in mind, that’s great! Please do feel free to go ahead with your own activity. You can carry out the same activity each year, you are under no obligation from STEPS to come up with something new each year.
The Engineers Ireland STEPS programme is calling on engineers, engineering organisations and role models to adopt a local school to provide real-world opportunities for students to engage with Ireland’s engineering community. Your visit may be in-school, in-house, or online. STEPS urges you to host at least one activity, such as a classroom visit.
Tips for finding a school to adopt:
Due to ongoing Covid-19 restrictions, it is best to check in with the school to see the most up to date visitor policies, and then work with the school on what activities are possible.
Carry out an engineering themed activity with children during STEPS Engineers Week using the below supports provided by the STEPS team.
The STEPS team are thrilled to partner with As Creatives on this new support for engineers and engineering organisations for STEPS Engineers Week 2022. The Adopt a School Toolkit: A Guide for Engineers support organisers of in-house, in-school, and digital visits. All the information you need to get organising a visit is conveniently located in one easy document. Download the Supporting Papers and Templates for template emails, papers etc.
Learn about the Adopt A School Toolkit for an in-person, online, or in-organisation visit.
Use our customisable PowerPoint slides for your school presentations. Add in information about yourself, your organisation, any interesting projects that you would like to highlight. Tip: Make sure to look at the notes section of the PowerPoint for speaking prompts and explanations.
Download the primary school presentation
To support organisers, STEPS has teamed up with Mark Langtry, Head of Science and Sport at Explorium, on two short training videos to help you adapt your presentation style to an online visit for children. Access the videos below:
Register your activity to receive access an exclusive STEPS Engineers Week 2022 Digital Promotional Pack to help promote your activities. Includes STEPS Engineers Week logos, template social media posts, template graphics etc. Promotional Pack coming soon.
STEAM Education develops and facilitates early intervention engineering programmes, matched to your company’s activity and staff, which support children and teachers in upper primary school to practice and love engineering! https://www.steameducation.store/
According to STEAM MD Dr. Alice D’Arcy:
"Our favourite (and the school favourite) programmes involve real life inspirational STEM professionals from your companies in the classrooms! However while we wait for vaccines and restrictions to lift you can avail of our virtual engagement programmes or simply Gift an Engineering Teacher-led box to a school near you.. the easy way to support STEM future skills development from as little as €500 until we can all get back in the classrooms!"
Read more about STEAM and what early intervention with primary schools can do for your company here: https://bit.ly/The-World-Needs-STEAM.
STEPS encourages you to help your adopted school carry out more than one engineering hands on activity for STEPS Engineers Week. STEPS has curated a number of activity ideas for both primary and secondary level. Registered organisers will be granted access to the school activities upon registration.
Furthermore, register your activity for these five key benefits:
Now is the time to shout about your STEPS Engineers Week Activity and communicate your success! Share an update of the activity with your network. Write a blog post for your website, create a video, update social media, circulate an internal email - all to showcase your involvement in STEPS Engineers Week.
Make sure to tag us and use our special hashtag #STEPSEngineersWeek and tag us:
Registered activity organisers will receive a Digital Promotional Pack to help promote your activities. The pack includes:
As an activity organiser it is critical for you and your students to evaluate your STEPS Engineers Week experiences, so we can analyse the positive impact of all your hard work. You can do this via our online evaluation or via a printable evaluation sheet.
STEPS will email this to all registered activity organisers in the lead up to STEPS Engineers Week 2022.