Pioneering Spirit STEAM Day

On Tuesday 8 November our Year 5 and Year 6 students enjoyed the first of three Pioneering Spirit Days to held this year in the Junior School. This was part of the Worldwise events series put on in collaboration with Education in Motion (EiM), the education group to which our College belogs.

EIM Pioneering Spirit Days aim to equip our Junior School students with the information and tools they will need for their future learning. Our lives are constantly evolving and changing; we are dealing with local and global issues and challenges every second and every minute of every day.

It was a fun and exciting day which began with a launch in the Mei Lan Fang theatre where a team of enthusiastic teachers performed a skit called The Taco Party. This explained the engineering process and what knowledge, skills students would need to apply to the STEAM based activities they would experience during the day.

After a short break to select workshops and form collaborative groups students were then involved in a mega cardboard challenge to create a marble run. After a morning of engineering, building and construction, students broke for a well-earned lunch break.

After lunch students participated in a range of STEAM-driven workshops that gave them a taste of what would be needed for future STEAM based projects. These workshops were a range of science, technology, design, critical thinking, engineering, construction and creativity-based activities. 

Some of these included robot wars in Vex, electrical engineering in Circuit Challenges, navigation and flight in Drones, chessboard design in 3D Design and engineering and construction in Boardgames, Net making and Cardboard Surgery. Students also developed their analytical and critical thinking skills in workshops like From Bad to Good and Game Mechanics and Graphic Design.

All students were captivated and immersed in the workshops, using their practical thinking skills, and applying prior knowledge in technology and design to come up with solutions to real life problems with innovation and creativity.

Our students here at DCSPD are future innovators, designers, engineers, entrepreneurs and leaders, and we support, motivate and challenge them to create a better world for themselves and everyone in it.

A huge thank you to the team of teachers leading the Pioneering Spirit Days in the DCSPD Junior School - Tia Luker-Putra, Ian Broadbent, Becca Hill, Janine Hudson, George Pearson and Kelly O’Rourke. We know the students can’t wait for the next two Pioneering Spirt days to come!