STEM

It was great to see so many people come and try out the STEM activities on Open Night last Tuesday. Thank you to Caleb, Ryan, Aaqil and William for your brilliant demonstrations of the Sphero and Dash robots.

This week the Junior School have been learning about scales, feathers, fur and shells that protect different animals. We had a go at turning Blob into some fossils, that showed the patterns these coverings make.

In the Middle School, we have been learning about Event Handlers. These are bits of program that only start IF/WHEN an event happens. E.G. if we are making a cake, we follow the recipe to make the mixture, WHEN the oven "dings" to say it's the correct temperature, then we can put the mixture into the oven. I pretended to be a programmer with all the students as the robots. I gave them instructions to follow that only changed IF/WHEN a special event occurred (tapping their shoulder, saying their name, them running into a door). There were a few faulty robots that might need a bit of fine tuning. Maybe you'd like to try the game at home? Maybe you'd like to program your little robots to do something else? (the dishes, the laundry, the vacuuming...)

In the Senior School the students (and their special guests) were given the chance to create a lever, that worked like a robot leg, to score a goal on our makeshift football fields. It was a good chance to use their knowledge of levers from previous weeks. There were a mixture of simple and complex designs built. There was also a mixture of successful and unsuccessful builds. All resulted in learning opportunities for the students. Next week we are moving onto gears.