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DSG CLUB BASICS Why a Club? Kids love clubs! They like being part of a group that meets on a regular basis and works together towards a common goal. Add membership cards, DSG notebooks, a Partner Exchange bulletin board, and Certificates of Achievement, and you have a recipe for engagement and fun. And because kids partner with a club from a different country, that makes them members of an international club! Basic Club Details Size: 15 kids maximum. Because the sessions build upon each other, try to have the same group of kids attend all the sessions. DSG isn’t a drop-in club, but one that requires steady attendance by its members. Ages: 10–13 Number of Sessions: 10 one-hour sessions over 10 weeks Extension Sessions: Watch “DSG Videos: Engineers and Inventors in Action.” If you have time beyond the one-hour sessions, or if you can schedule extra sessions, have kids watch related Design Squad videos, which appear at the end of each session. They give kids a background in what real-life engineers and inventors do. Scheduling and Coordination with your Partner Club

• Have your club meet at the same time each week. • Coordinate your schedule with your Partner Club. Your clubs should run on

roughly the same schedules, doing the same sessions in the same week. Check your calendars—are there holidays or other events that might affect the schedule?

• If one club needs to skip a week, the other club may choose to meet and do another hands-on activity taken from the DSG website or watch Design Squad videos instead. That way, the clubs will be back in sync the following week.

CLUB MATERIALS Membership Cards Print and cut out the DSG membership cards and attach a string to each so kids can hang them around their necks during the sessions. Establish a place where kids can find their cards at the start of each meeting and return them when it’s over. At the end of each session, make a checkmark on the grid on the back of the card to mark their attendance. There is a template for creating the membership cards in the “Handouts and Posters” section.

Notebooks Pass out the DSG notebooks and encourage kids to use them during the session to jot down ideas and sketch their designs.

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Certificates of Achievement In the last session, which is a party, you’ll present each club member with a Certificate of Achievement. See “Handouts and Posters” section. The Partner Exchange Bulletin Board Create a place to post highlights from the Partner Exchanges—the photos, sketches, transcriptions of kids’ comments, and other materials Partner Clubs send each other about their engineering and invention challenges. Feature examples of kids collaborating and solving problems, not just the final results. Through the design process, you are teaching kids a way of thinking and working out a problem—help them value it as a process. The board can be an actual corkboard, poster or foam board taped together, a space on a wall, or even a large sheet of paper that you can roll up and take down between sessions. Use the Design Squad Global Partner Exchange sign (see “Handouts and Posters” section) and label your bulletin board with the headings “Our Club” and “Our Partner Club.”