Science, Technology, and Engineering

Communicating with the Specialist Team

We look forward to partnering with you in 2023, and welcome your input:

Hayley Oliver (Science, Technology, and Engineering)  Hayley.Oliver@education.vic.gov.au

Hello and welcome to 2023!!! I am SO excited to be introducing Science as a specialist this year. What fun we are going to have! 

We have started the year, by chatting about what Science is. Apparently, it’s a lot of explosions!! But also the word fun has come up a lot and that is my aim, to make Science an enjoyable learning experience. 

We also discovered that part of Science is about teamwork and working cooperatively with a group of people to solve a problem or research a question. The students had to work together to try and use only string and elastic, to stack cups into a pyramid. This was a challenge, but I was impressed with how the teams worked together to come up with a solution. 

The first few weeks, we have also had a strong focus on lab safety. The students came up with an agreement, which they have signed, on how to demonstrate safety in the Science classroom. I was really impressed with what they came up with. We are excited that our safety glasses have arrived and we are all looking forward to our lab coats arriving. It would be wonderful if students could come to school with their hair tied back and out of their face, on a Science day. 

Last week, we all learnt about the Scientific Method. What’s the best way to learn about it? See it in action. Both the grade 3/4s and the grade 5/6s got to make Elephant Toothpaste (the kid friendly version).

Throughout the experiment, we learnt about each step of the Scientific Method, working together and reading instructions carefully. We had so much fun along the way!

The 5/6s are currently learning about the States of Matter, the different properties of each and how they behave. They will be designing a small rocket and then creating gas, to see if the rocket can launch and how high. 

The 3/4s are currently learning about different materials of packages and their properties. We will be looking at all sorts of packaging and testing them against different conditions, such as rough delivery drivers and pouring rain. 

The 3/4s will then design a package (considering cost, environment, size, shape, etc) to put something fragile in (for example a biscuit) and test their package against some different and difficult conditions.

What a wonderful and busy start to the year we have had!