STEM

Welcome back to STEM for Term 2! We are so excited to have so many fun science, technology and design activities planned for the weeks ahead!

All year levels have started this term by completing a Cyber Safety Project lesson and revising how we use technology safely. The preps focussed on: Personal Information that is safe or unsafe to share. Grade 1 and 2 students: learnt about their digital footprint and how to make sure they are making good choices online. The Grade 3 and 4s explored their digital door and considered different behaviours and choices that can keep them safe. The Grade 5 and 6s were learning more about online integrity and how their online activities can be permanent.

Our science focus this term is PHYSICS! The Preps will be learning about how toys and other objects can move as well as how forces applied to these things can change their movement. The Grade 1 and 2s are exploring push and pull forces and how we use these actions everyday (eg. pushing when we kick the soccer ball or pulling the chair out before sitting down). The Grade 3 and 4s are learning about forces and grouping these into contact forces (push and pull) and non-contact (gravity, magnets and electrostatic forces). We will also discuss friction, resistance and how these can affect movement. In Grades 5 and 6 we will be exploring electricity and creating working circuits to demonstrate our learning.

For our coding unit of work, each year level will be using both online coding programs as well as different robots such as Beebots, VEX and Micro:bits. We will be creating algorithms (a set of instructions), identifying bugs (problems) and practising how to debug (fix) our codes. Our older students will also be challenging themselves with variables which are coding blocks that can have different outcomes.

We can’t wait for all the exciting learning, experiments and challenges that we have ahead of us this term in STEM!