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Energiser
Every session begins with an energiser. Usually there’s a rota showing who will lead the energiser. We have some favourite games you can play if you are stuck.
- Traffic Jam: re-order the cars to unblock yourself
- Telephone: draw the words and write the pictures
- Popcorn show and tell: popcorn around the room and show one nearby object or something in your pocket or bag and explain what it means to you.
Morning orientation
Learning Objectives
Planning during the week
👣 Steps
If you haven’t done so already, choose someone (volunteer or trainee) to be the facilitator for this morning orientation block. Choose another to be the timekeeper.
🎙️ The Facilitator will:
- Assemble the entire group (all volunteers & all trainees) in a circle
- Briefly welcome everyone with an announcement, like this:
💬 “Morning everyone, Welcome to CYF {REGION}, this week we are working on {MODULE} {SPRINT} and we’re currently working on {SUMMARISE THE TOPICS OF THE WEEK}”
- Ask any newcomers to introduce themselves to the group, and welcome them.
- Now check: is it the start of a new module? Is it sprint 1? If so, read out the success criteria for the new module.
- Next go through the morning day plan only (typically on the curriculum website) - and check the following things:
Facilitator Checklist
- Check the number of volunteers you have for the morning
- Check someone is leading each session
- Describe how any new activities works for the group
- Decide how best to allocate trainees and volunteers for a given block - most blocks will make this clear
⏰ The Timekeeper will:
- Announce the start of an activity and how long it will take (check everyone is listening)
- Manage any whole class timers that are used in an activity
- Give people a 10-minute wrap-up warning before the end of an activity
- Announce the end of an activity and what happens next
Teamwork Project S1
🤙🏽 FeedbackLearning Objectives
Preparation
Introduction
Brainstorm about teamwork in the tech industry.
🎯 Goal: Discuss teamwork in the tech industry. (35 minutes)
Think about the teams you will work with in tech. Discuss in your team:
- What is your dream job?
- What professional roles will be in your team?
- What other people/teams will you interact with?
- What non-technical skills will you bring?
- What non-technical skills should you develop while at CYF?
- Which of the Belbin’s tole do you identify strongest with?
- Define which team member will be the time keeper for your team.
- Work in your teams for about 10 minutes and write down brief answers to each question.
- Assign one of the team members as speaker to deliver your answers back to the class in maximum 2 minutes.
Discuss the roles in a product team
🎯 Goal: To discuss the importance of different roles in tech teams. (10 minutes)
The following are the roles typically found within a development team. As you see, there are plenty of roles other than ‘Full-Stack Developer’.
Discuss as a class the responsibilities of the following tech roles.
Write a brief description for each of them on a post-it and share the post it on a collaborative board:
- Front-end web developer
- Back-end web developer
- UX/UI designer
- UX researcher
- Product manager
- Quality Assurance/Quality Engineer (tester)
- Tech lead
Team Charter
🎯 Goal: To discuss the importance of setting clear goals and responsibilities within a team. (15 minutes)
You might come across a ceremony called “team charter” in your future work.
Team charters define roles, responsibilities and ways of working. If these are not clear to you when you join a new company, you should ask and seek clarification urgently.
Discuss as a class:
- Why is it important for your team to understand their main goal?
- Why is it important for everybody on your team to understand the role each other plays?
- What is the importance of having clear ways of working?
- What happens when you are not clear about these three points?
Spend the rest of your time clarifying any questions about the project and the coursework for the first week.
Usability Workshop
Learning Objectives
The goal of this workshop is to help trainees understand the usability principles that enable them to create functional and user-friendly digital products.
This workshop is expected to accompany the associated slides in Figma (passcode: cyf2025) - make sure to present them and work through them.
Introduction (5 mins)
- Go through the agenda
- The goal - what we will achieve today
- What is product thinking - think product, not just feature
- Let’s talk about usability - make things easy: usability in practice
- Useful tools - tools that help you design better
- Explain the goal of the session
- This session explores the importance of usability and user experience (UX) in product development.
- It is related to the TV Project assignment, where students are expected to plan, design and code.
- Understanding UX helps create products that meet users’ needs and deliver real value.
- Explain what they will achieve
- Explain the fundamentals of product thinking as a key mindset in product development
- Apply core usability principles to design effective and user-friendly experiences
- Use UI toolkits to enhance the visual quality of projects
- Apply these concepts directly to the upcoming assignment
Understanding Product Thinking (15 mins)
Discuss in small groups for 5 minutes:
Given an example of building a food delivery app, what happens when it’s built without and with product thinking?
Background for volunteers
- Without product thinking, the focus might be on adding more features such as a detailed map or numerous filters, simply because other apps include them or they look appealing.
- With product thinking, the focus shifts to user needs. For example, recognising that users often want speed and convenience might lead to adding a “Reorder Favourites” button on the home screen. This approach prioritises solving real user problems and delivering meaningful value.
Explain what product thinking is
Hints for volunteers
* Product thinking focuses on solving the right problems for the right users. Without it, products may look impressive but fail to deliver real value. * Effective product development requires aligning features with user goals and needs prioritising meaningful, useful solutions over simply adding more features.✍️Exercise (10 mins)
Open the YouTube Movies website and spend a few minutes exploring it. Think about two key questions:
- Who are the customers/users?
- Why are they building this website — what problem are they trying to solve
Volunteers: Run the Kahoot quiz linked below.
Trainees: Join this Kahoot! quiz on your phone.
Hint for volunteers
- Make sure everyone joins via the provided link.
- The Kahoot! quiz has two multiple-choice questions set up, just follow the order shown there.
Understanding Usability re-cap (5 mins)
Trainees should have completed the pre-reading.
As a class, recap the 12 usability principles.
Get ready to wear a UXer’s hat and review a digital product!
You’re welcome to open the pre-read while doing the following tasks.
Review a Digital Product and Analyse Its Usability (45 mins)
Get into pairs and review the YouTube Movies.
First task:
- Pick at least one feature or design element that follows one of the usability principles.
- Discuss with your partner why this is beneficial to users.
- Add your findings in this FigJam board.
Second task:
- Find a feature or design element that does not follow a usability principle.
- Discuss with your partner how this might affect the user.
- Add your findings in this FigJam board.
Third task:
- Pick one of the problems you found.
- Brainstorm and propose a solution.
- Present your solution using a simple sketch or wireframe, with a short note explaining the problem, the solution, and which principle(s) it follows.
Share your findings (10 mins)
Two groups should share their solution with the class.
Share the tools that help design better (5 mins)
The last part is to share tools that can help you design better and make the process easier:
Inspiration
Colour palette
Icons
Designing with AI
Prototyping with AI
Design support
- Design feedback session with UI/UX volunteers to help trainees and graduates, offer feedback on their work or portfolios, or provide design tips. Book a feedback session here.
Q&A (5 mins)
Ask/discuss any questions.
Community Lunch
Every Saturday we cook and eat together. We share our food and our stories. We learn about each other and the world. We build community.
This is everyone’s responsibility, so help with what is needed to make this happen, for example, organising the food, setting up the table, washing up, tidying up, etc. You can do something different every week. You don’t need to be constantly responsible for the same task.
Study Group
Learning Objectives
Trainees
This is time for you to get help with whatever you need help with.
If you didn’t understand something in the prep, ask about it.
If you were struggling with a backlog exercise, get help with it.
If you weren’t quite sure of something in a workshop, discuss it.
If you don’t have any problems, keep working through the backlog until you need help.
It can be useful to get into groups with others facing the same problem, or working on the same backlog item.
Volunteers
Don’t be scared to approach people and ask what they’re working on - see if you can help them out, or stretch their understanding.
If lots of people have the same problems, maybe you can put together a demonstration or a workshop to help them understand.
If absolutely no one needs help, consider reviewing some PRs using the process and guidelines in the #cyf-code-review-team Slack channel canvas.
Breaks
No one can work solidly forever! Make sure to take breaks when you need.
Retro: Start / Stop / Continue
🕹️Retro (20 minutes)
A retro is a chance to reflect. You can do this on RetroTool (create a free anonymous retro and share the link with the class) or on sticky notes on a wall.
- Set a timer for 5 minutes. There’s one on the RetroTool too.
- Write down as many things as you can think of that you’d like to start, stop, and continue doing next sprint.
- Write one point per note and keep it short.
- When the timer goes off, one person should set a timer for 1 minute and group the notes into themes.
- Next, set a timer for 2 minutes and all vote on the most important themes by adding a dot or a +1 to the note.
- Finally, set a timer for 8 minutes and all discuss the top three themes.