What Does a Classroom Visit Look Like?

School visits can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it. The basic info is in on our Volunteer page under “3. Plan Your Visit.” Still, this step-by-step account by CTDE Board Member Tricia Berry (UT-WEP / TxGCP) should help you get started:

Here’s what I do during a typical 1-hour visit for up to about 4 classes (~80 students) at a time (or more if teachers help out with materials distribution and troubleshooting). It works best with 1-2 classes (20-45 students) at a time, but I can scale as needed given time available. Sometimes I go to a school for 2 hours and hit 2 classes at a time…sometimes I go for 3 hours and hit 3 separate classes (or 6 classes if they double up).

1. Contact the teacher and figure out the logistics including day, time, how to group the classes, and what they are studying so I can do an activity somewhat related to that and talk about engineering related to that topic, etc.

2. Plan my visit:

a. Pick-up CTDE materials (teacher bags, goodies for the kids, etc.

b. Choose the activity I am going to do and get the materials. I have typically stuck with one of 3 activities: Gumdrop Dome (1st – 4th grade), Newspaper Tower (middle school through high school), or Sliders Glider (4th – 9th grade).

3. My typical agenda looks like this:

15 min intro about me, my background and a “what has an engineer touched or helped make that you can find in this room” activity (sometimes you have to get creative on the engineering connections when students throw out things like “air” – engineers help make sure the air we breathe is clean – or “my skin” – engineers help create bandages to help your skin heal when you are injured – etc.)

5 min activity introduction and passing out materials

20 min activity construction, creativity, design, build

10 min testing, debriefing, discussion, Q&A

10 min wrap-up – what happened in the activity, summary info, connections to the real world

I usually don’t get volunteers to go with me as that is just more work and I can usually handle the classes on my own with the help of the teachers to pass out materials, etc.

READY TO VOLUNTEER? We hope you will take the time to sign-up to host a classroom visit this academic year!