Helping students to evaluate needs and opportunities

• We went back to past projects and talked about how peoples' needs were considered.
• We challenged our students to identify problems in the community, the home or the school. We had lots of discussion about opportunities to improve things. Then we did some evaluation – surveyed potential users to check that we had assessed the need correctly.
• We talked about the idea of being enterprising – using our brains and eyes to see what needed doing. Students worked in groups to record their ideas about people's needs. When we had some suggestions, we surveyed people to see whether there was really a need to improve something.
• Our students responded to opportunities we (teachers) suggested by making observations and recording their thoughts in their journals. We spent a lot of time drafting the exact words for a design brief and talking about the things that would limit the project.