Learning and Curriculum Primary - Stage 3

STEM Gala Day

Last week, our Year 6 students visited Santa Sabina College to take part in an exciting STEM Gala Day, where curiosity, creativity, and collaboration were front and centre. The event brought together young minds to explore real-world challenges through the lens of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

Students heard from inspiring guest speakers working in STEM industries, who shared their journeys and the impact of their work in solving global and local problems. These talks sparked lively discussions and set the stage for the day’s hands-on investigations.

Working in teams, students tackled case studies that required them to think critically and apply STEM principles to develop innovative solutions. From designing sustainable cities to responding to environmental emergencies, each scenario challenged students to combine scientific thinking with empathy and teamwork.

We are extremely grateful to the staff at Santa Sabina for hosting such a wonderful day.

Sarah Tatola                                                                         Daniel Fields

Head of Teaching and Learning (Stage 3)                   Head of Curriculum (Stage 3)

Tournament of the Minds

On Sunday 31 August, seven boys from 6 Red represented the College in a competition against other schools called the Tournament of Minds (TOM). TOM was held at Barker College, and we participated in the discipline of Language Literature. In TOM we had to answer both a long-term challenge and a spontaneous challenge question which we received on the day. Our long-term challenge was to create a performance reimagining a Shaun Tan book to convey an underlying message related to the book. The book we chose was The Arrival. Over the course of three weeks, we worked tirelessly to create, practice and perfect a performance that could effectively convey and reimagine The Arrival. We used a variety of media to convey our message of connection such as mime, symbolism through colour and the darbuka. We even went to the woodwork shop and worked with Mr Viney to create a frame to use for our performance, which was quite fun.

Soon enough, the day had finally come. While we were all nervous, we were also very excited to finally perform. When we had all gathered at Barker we signed in, practiced our performance one last time and set up all our props. It was now finally the time we had all been waiting for. In the blink of an eye, we were transformed from seven SPC students to seven unique and intriguing characters and took our audience on the moving journey with us.  We could all agree that we did an amazing job and were proud of ourselves for the performance we worked so hard on. 

We now had one challenge to go, our spontaneous. After a quick break filled with sugar and laughter, we were ready for the spontaneous challenge. 

The question we were provided with was: The number 1 no longer existed. Who would get rid of it, why and what effects would it have? We had four minutes to discuss and prepare an answer to the judge's question. As our time started, we quickly organised ourselves to work on different aspects of the question so we could regroup at the end, share and decide what we should say to respond to the judge's questions. We ended up creating creative and original responses which we were able to use to effectively answer the question. 

Now the day was finally over. Overall, we had lots of fun creating, preparing and participating in TOM. Whilst we didn’t end up placing, we thought it was a great experience which we learnt a lot from. 

On behalf of the TOM boys, we would like to give a huge thanks to Ms Osorio Narvaez, Ms Chander and Ms Mazoudier for all the work they did to help prepare us for this competition. They took lots of time out of their already busy life to help us prepare for TOM. We would also like to thank Mr Viney, who took time out of his day to help us create a wooden frame to use for our performance.

Alexander Madejski and Hugo Nohra | Year 6 Students