Goal: Class teamwork and role-play exercise in human relations, games and sport, design and technology.

Procedure:

First, ask the class what personal characteristics are necessary for an astronaut to have.

They might think about:

• Balance - ability to orientate oneself
• Intelligence - obvious
• Dexterity - need to work in awkward postures in heavy clothing
• Reaction ability - how quick are they?
• Boredom threshold - could they live in isolation for a prolonged period?
• Compatibility with others - do they get on with people?
• Problem solving - can they sort out difficult logic puzzels

Think about how you might design simple tasks and problems to see if students would make good astronauts. You may need to make or adapt some equipment. Think about what you have in class and other parts of the school - what about the gym? Toys and games might be ideal starting points for test equipment, too.

Now get the students to make the test equipment or design the puzzels. You may consider how you might use the computer for this.

Once the equipment is made, divide the class into assessors and prospective crew members.

The assessors task is to devise the test methods and procedures, record the performance of the candidates and make recommendations about who are the most suitable candidates.

The astronauts group are the guineapigs.

To ensure everything is fair, swap the groups over and test the original assessors.

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