15th March 17
What better way to spend the week which sees the world celebrating International Women’s Day than by introducing our girls to some of the more cutting edge areas of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths?
On Monday the girls learnt about the forces of flight and experimented by building aircraft. They were encouraged to use their knowledge of forces to minimise the effects of gravity and air resistance and maximise lift in order to travel furthest when shot from our air powered rocket launcher.
On Wednesday we unboxed and started to build our new robot, the Vex IQ Clawbot! The girls had to work together as a team, dividing up the jobs before bringing their individual parts together. Following a challenging set of instructions, the girls had to be precise and methodical or be prepared for some problem solving!
Meanwhile the Reception children had their own team building a Lego car and competed against each other with tower building – are these the faces of our future civil engineers?
The Year 3’s work on the robot was reinforced on Thursday with their visit to the Science Museum. They went to the IMAX theatre to watch a film about the latest innovations in the quest to make robots human.
On Friday the real fun began and their problem solving skills were pushed to the limit. The girls created code for the robot to perform a dance routine using the drag and drop Robot C programming language. The STEM session in Reception saw the girls delve into the world of problem solving as they navigated mazes using the Bee Bot!
Throughout the week the girls have been challenging the conception that the STEM subjects are a “boys only” club. Inventor of the programming language compiler and Godmother of Computer Science, Grace Hopper, once said “I’ve always been more interested in the future than in the past” – let’s hope these girls will take on that mindset and embrace the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths as potential future paths.