Pupils from West End Schools’ Trust took part in a week of activities focussed around STEM subjects with support from the Enviresearch Fund administered through Community Foundation Tyne & Wear and Newcastle West End Children’s Community.
The week included a variety of activities which included trips to the Centre of Life and the Discovery Museum in Newcastle where the pupils explored the exhibits and took part in a series of workshops.
At the Discovery Museum, the schoolchildren learnt about circuits and John Henry Holmes; Joseph Swan and camera obscuras; wind turbines, even designing and testing their own blades in a wind tunnel; and learning about simple machines using lego and knex to manufacture and test their own machines. At their visit to the Centre for Life the students had the opportunity to view talks from STEM professionals from Sir Robert McAlphine, BAM Construct UK, Northumbria Police and Sunderland University. Jenny Search Head of Schools and Community Engagement at the Centre for Life was particularly pleased with the day commenting:
“We had a fantastic time delivering STEM workshops that were hands-on, engaging and relevant to pupils’ lives. We were delighted to see pupils excited and inspired by the wealth of STEM careers available in the North East, including medicine, virtual reality and cyber security. ”
All the schools in the trust were visited by the Success4All learning bus. They were set the challenge of creating a structure which would save their egg from a 4 metre fall from the top of the learning bus with a fictional budget of £100 to spend at the Egg Drop Shop which supplied the materials to build this with.
To finish off the week, the children visited the Newcastle United Foundation’s NUCastle where they were challenged to think about technology from the past and what technology we might have in the future. There was a Trust wide catapult competition where children made a catapult using spoons, lollipop sticks, rubber bands and paper clips to fling pompoms. The winners were Moorside Primary School who won the STEMtastic trophy and a robotic ball activity kit.
Helen Thomson, Trust Officer for West End Schools’ Trust said:
“Newcastle West End Children’s Community has been bringing local partners together to work in new ways to support children. Our recent STEMtastic week was an excellent example of how everyone pulled together to inspire our school children to engage with Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. 379 children took part in a range of fun and stimulating activities, visiting different venues and enhancing their learning outside the classroom. We couldn’t have done it without the joint efforts of our partners, school staffand the children themselves. It was STEMtastic fantastic! Thank you to all involved!”
Chris Zarraga Director of Schools North East said:
“It looks as though the pupils at West End Schools Trust had a fantastic week with both in and out of school activities which have an educational value. This is a really inventive way of working STEM learning into the primary school curriculum in a fun and exciting way.”
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