Children's novelist Lucy Hawking was at the independent Sancton Wood School in Cambridge on Wednesday.
Ms Hawking said she used one of her father's phrases when she told the children to make the world "a place we want to visit".
Her speech, in front of 120 pupils, was entitled How to Make a Better World.
"I'm trying to open a doorway to say you can be part of this," she said.
"You can understand these issues, here is the vocabulary and here are big questions associated with this topic and you have the right to have an opinion about it."
The 52-year-old was part of the Thriving Minds Symposium workshops that gave pupils the opportunity to meet experts in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), creative writing, art and design and sport.
She was joined by former England rugby international Prof Mark Bailey, who is an academic in late medieval history at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.
Ms Hawking writes science books for children, is a trustee of the Autism Research Trust and also chairperson of the Stephen Hawking Foundation.
"Science and technology increasingly dominate the world that we live in and I'm trying to give them a way into it," she added.
Sancton Wood School principal Richard Settle said: "It's an opportunity for our thriving minds students to take a deeper dive into those areas of the curriculum they are interested in."
The one-day event was held for 120 pupils in years six to ten from a range of schools across Cambridge.
The daughter of physicist Stephen Hawking said she tried to "open a doorway" for pupils when she gave a keynote speech at a STEM workshop.