From the
Assistant Principal
Dear Parents/Carers,
Education Week gave me an opportunity to catch up and speak with a range of parents. It has been a long time since parents have had the opportunity to come into our school. I have also had individual conversations with parents which have had the same theme. The conversations have been around understanding the impact which COVID19 and lockdown have had on different families and children. Our staff have been reading and discussing the work of Adam Voigt for the last twelve months. So when I found the video, I thought it would a supportive way for parents to understand the new climate in which we find ourselves working.
Education Week celebrations at Rowville Primary School began on Monday with our STEM Parliamentary members proudly representing our school at our STEM Twilight event. A range of STEM experiences such as coding Beebots, cardboard construction with the MakeDo Kits, Lego building, straw construction, experiencing augmented reality with Merge Cubes, creating Playdough sculptures and engineering cars engaged our visitors and their parents. I would like to thank Mrs Coveney and our outstanding STEM member on the way they proudly represented our school.
STEM provides the opportunity to improve student engagement and participation, encourage active learning and address real world problems and challenges through an innovative and stimulating STEM education program at Rowville Primary School.
We have hit the ground running in STEM this term with students in Foundation, Year One and Year Two all working on their Maths Talent Quest Investigations. Students have been busily collecting and analysing data, creating graphs and tables, mapping and documenting their thinking about living things, bird life at Rowville and the ways that Rowville Primary School use water. Students are beginning to really articulate their thinking and are drawing conclusions based on the information they have collected.
Year Three and Four students are continuing with their Lego builds with a focus on gears and pulleys. This week students have begun their Lego Masters Design Challenge where they must apply all of their learning from this semester to design and engineer their own Lego build based on specific criteria!
Year Five spent last term investigating Earth’s different spheres and are now working on developing their 3D design skills so that they can design and engineer buildings that will withstand different geological and weather events. When designing and engineering their buildings, they will apply knowledge learnt in term one and also investigate biomimicry; a practice that looks into how humans can mimic nature and natural systems to solve problems.
Year Six students spent last term learning about and experimenting with different types of energy. This term, students have been learning about creating electrical circuits and will then focus on designing and engineering a product that uses electrical energy to make a sound, move or use light. They have already brainstormed some amazing ideas and I cannot wait to see their finished products.
Have a great fortnight.
Kind regards,
Tiffany Bamford
Assistant Principal