JMSS

JOHN MONASH SCIENCE SCHOOL, PRIMARY SCHOOL OUTREACH PROGRAM 2026

Over the last four weeks, 20 Year 5 students were involved in the John Monash Science School (JMSS), Primary School Outreach program. The Primary School Outreach program is designed to introduce high-ability Year 5/6 students to a range of advanced STEM topics. Across four exciting sessions, our students engaged in interactive learning experiences guided and mentored by JMSS Year 10 and Year 11 students, who supported and lead them through each activity. The four learning areas/topics that Highvale students took part in were: 

• Little Scientists, Big Science: students explore topics such as flight physics, pH testing, anatomy and adaptation, robotics, and engineering.
• Mini Mathematicians: a fun, hands‑on approach to mathematics using games, puzzles, and problem‑solving challenges\, and
• Spike Prime‑ARY: a robotics program using the LEGO Spike Prime platform to introduce coding, engineering, and creative problem‑solving.

All Year 5 students represented Highvale in an exemplary way and participated with great enthusiasm. This is a program that Highvale has been involved in for many years and we look forward to offering it again in 2027 to interested Year 5 students.

Thank you to all parents who transported their child and other students to Monash University and an extra big thank you to those parents who stayed and supervised students, we rely on your involvement in order to offer many of these activities to our students!

Student quotes:

• It was fun learning new maths techniques – Arshia

   

• I really enjoyed learning how to code different things – Emma

   

• It was a great experience, and I liked learning about science – Andrea

   

• I liked the range of activities and the cool equipment. It was also great to work with people from other schools - Cassie

   

• I really enjoyed all the different activities – Talitha

   

• We learnt how to encode a prosthetic arm - Tevin

   

• I learnt how to solve the square root of numbers. I found this very interesting - Anesh

   

• Doing to the 12 piece pentomino puzzle because it was tricky and it challenged me. It is the world hardest 12 piece puzzle! – Lily

   

• I enjoyed doing all the different experiments and learning about physics - Lilah

• I enjoyed all the different experiments and I also enjoyed Eliska and Anisha (other students) who helped us during the experiments - Meera