This session is for teachers, lab technicians, and University-based outreach staff who regularly attend schools. The session is organised and led by outreach officers with teaching experience who understand the everyday practicalities and barriers that science teachers have to face.
 
The session will bring together all aspects of space education, showing that astronomy and geophysics are important in enthusing and maintaining a love for physics and science. Astronomy is a great hook for getting students to partake in science post GCSE and this session will give ideas and suggestions to do just that.
 
The session will have invited speakers who have involvement in classroom space schemes for primary and secondary schools, give advice for planning and delivering astronomy practicals, have time for teacher networking and sharing of best practise and suggest new ideas or experiments that can be done in a classroom setting.

During the day there will be a mix of invited and contributed talks. Invited talks will be from speakers who regularly work with early years and key stage 2 students, secondary teachers who are teaching GCSE Astronomy or have a large involvement in bringing astronomy and geophysics into the classroom and speakers from robotic telescope projects and European projects. There will also be time to discuss practical activities and resources available to all age groups.
Contributed talks can be from any type of educator; for example, teachers who wish to share good practise or raise discussions, university professionals searching for new ideas to take in to schools or ways to break research down into a curriculum friendly lesson, or laboratory technicians willing to share their insight into what actually works in the classroom and what is simply lost in translation. The networking sessions will allow time for debate, advice and collaborations between various education professionals.