Super session for Level 1 students with Horizon Nuclear Power

Personnel from Horizon Nuclear (Claire Burgess, Stephen Thomas and Gerwyn Williams) delivered a super session on problem solving, communication and teamwork for our Blue Skies Level 1 students on 16th January.

After everyone introduced and shared an interesting fact about themselves, Steve set a challenge to throw a tennis ball in pairs at the same time. Once the students mastered that, they had to work in threes and then in sixes. It was certainly a challenge for all six balls to be thrown and caught at the same time! The students achieved it by communicating when to throw the ball, throwing the ball kindly to their teammate and through perseverance.

The main activity of the day was to build a bridge, with the group split into two teams, each building one half. The bridge had to span across four sheets of A4 paper, without any support touching the paper. The students were given plastic cups, paper, lots of sellotape, straws and lolly sticks to achieve the task. Each group had a leader who was given the instructions of the task and had to relay it back to their team. They also had to talk throughout the task to check their two halves of the bridges would meet as they teams were not allowed to look at each other’s construction.

The leaders tasked their group with different roles; one person was the timekeeper as there was only limited time to complete the challenge; others designed the bridge; others were responsible for making supports using lolly sticks, plastic cups or paper rods. The teams worked really well together, clarifying what each member was doing, sharing their ideas, asking for help from their teammate if they had come across a problem and not giving up when things went wrong.

Yazmin, 13 said “Claire was talking to me and said ‘You are doing really well.’ I think my problem solving improved because I came up with lots of ideas. I worked well in my team with everyone.” Leighton, 13 said “I persevered by not giving up on the bridge.”

When the time was up, the students brought their two halves together and they matched; they had successfully made one bridge! Each team commented on what they liked about the other team’s section and the challenging parts of the construction were discussed.

The highs and the lows of the session were also discussed; the students enjoyed the challenge of the activities, with some saying they didn’t like being told what to do. This raised an important discussion about the world of work, about how employees are set tasks and challenges to be solved or completed. The session also demonstrated how the skills the students used to construct the bridge – teamwork, communication and problem solving – are vital skills employers are looking for.

Kayleigh, 13 said afterwards “I’m never confident around new people, but I felt more confident when I said nice things about Christian in front of everyone.”

Thank you very much to Claire, Steve and Gerwyn from Horizon Nuclear for delivering a challenging, fun and informative session.