STEM Term 2

In STEM, students will begin this term with an engineering challenge based on their Physics learning from Term 1. Students will need to design, create, test and modify their ideas. Most year levels will be crafting their projects using mostly cardboard. 

If you have any cardboard boxes, particularly shoe boxes or medium sized boxes that you’d be happy to part with, please bring them into the STEM room for the students to use.

The Preps and Grade 1s will be creating a ramp for a toy car to drive down. Their challenge is to create a structure that can stand up by itself and are aiming to make the car roll for as long as possible after it leaves the ramp!

Grade 2 Students are designing and creating their very own instruments. Using their knowledge about vibrations and soundwaves, their instruments will be able to make 3 different sounds. 

Grade 3 Students learnt about heat energy last term. Their project is to create a functioning solar oven! They’ll use the heat energy from the Sun and trap it in their ovens in an attempt to cook some cookies! 

The Grade 4s have a wider scope for their projects. They learnt about a variety of contact and non-contact forces last term. Their challenge is to create a model that can demonstrate a force of their choice such as magnetism, gravity or water or air resistance. In Grade 5, the students are using lights, lasers and mirrors to create a mirror maze. Their goal is to create a model that demonstrates how light reflects and can travel in straight lines. 

The Grade 6s are working on designing, building and testing their own electric circuit that can be used as a functioning alarm system! 

After this engineering block, students will be beginning a Chemical Science Block. During this 7-8 week block, students will learn about materials and different states of matter. 

The Preps and Grade 1s will learn about the properties of materials and how materials can be combined and will also learn about mixtures.

The Grade 2s will test the properties of materials and learn about how materials can be changed so that they can be recycled.

In Grade 3-4, students will learn about states of matter and how states can be changed with heating and cooling. 

The Grade 5-6 students will learn about particles, changing states and soluble mixtures.