What's happening in STEM
ISIC Junior Workshops 2026
On Tuesday August 11th, the ISIC team along with Ms T had the opportunity to share some really valuable knowledge and information with the junior students of our school. We attended a Peer Tutoring Workshop with other ISIC leaders back in Term 2, to help us with this presentation. To make sure we did a good job with it, we spent at last 5 weeks working as a team and doing lots of rehearsals.
We started by teaching the younger students how to keep our ocean clean and recycle rubbish. We made it fun by dressing up and doing a performance to keep them engaged. We also taught them about Australian Fur Seals and how rubbish can hurt them, by getting stuck around their bodies or being eaten. We need to stop rubbish from getting into our oceans and work together to protect the seals and other sea animals.
One of the activities we did was learning about the Smooth Stingray. We talked about how they swim and how big they are. We also talked about the Eleven Arm Sea Star. We told them that it can have between seven to fourteen arms, not just eleven. We gave the students a funny experience to teach them about how rubbish can end up in the ocean and animals can eat it.
We also taught them about the Port Jackson Shark and how it carries its black curvy egg in its mouth. It is black and curvy to disguise itself and squeeze into rock crevices. Another thing we taught them about was the Decorator crab and how they disguise them. We also did the actions ‘’snip snip, lick lick and stick stick’’ which symbolizes how they camouflage. We also taught them to not throw the Moonsnail Eggs, even though it is tempting and why it is better to leave them on the shore.
Students got the chance to go beachcombing. They got the chance to see us demonstrate and teach them about beachcombing too. This means they looked at how shells with holes in them are formed, how seaglass gets smoothed, how plastic bottles get to the shore, and all about sea sponges!
Students also learnt the importance of how little things, like using plastic straws, affect our marine life. They looked at things we can replace plastic straws with: like rubber straws, paper straws, metal straws, and more. Or little things, like how we can decorate places without using balloons. Students thought of amazing ideas, such as using paper banners or even making their own decorations.
Although we were a little nervous to begin with, by the end of the presentations our confidence had grown and we felt happy that we had shared our learning with others.
From the ISIC Team and Ms T
