Well, that is CPS/Science week for another year! It was fantastic to see so many students passionate about exploring the ‘how and why’ things work in our world. While our main theme this year is the ongoing study of our frog pond habitat, we didn’t miss the opportunity to take part in many other amazing activities. Each lunchtime, students had the opportunity to include themselves in hands-on inquiry and science-based learning projects that included coding, building, designing and exploring! With so many budding scientists in our school, it is never a wonder when we have a record number of students participating each year. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the teachers who helped organise these amazing activities as it would not have been possible without your efforts.
Through the week it was also fantastic to see the BEBRAS Family Challenge entries roll in. By Friday morning we had just over 50 entrants which is an amazing effort for our first time running the competition. With classrooms from year 3 through to 6 participating in the annual BEBRAS challenge this year, I feel we have had a great preparation for this year’s challenge. Thank you for your emails with the entries… it was great to hear that the competition generated great discussion and family time! Congratulations go to Rachel from room 16 who was the lucky person to be drawn out of the entry box! You have won a family pass to Scitech.
Congratulations also go out to our year 5 and 6 students who entered the Scitech Design Thinking Challenge this year. Seven teams of four nominated for the challenge and gave up their lunchtime all week to participate. The teams were thrown the challenge of solving our carpark woes and it was amazing to see the variety and originality of their solutions. Following the Design Thinking process, teams empathised with users of the carpark then continued to ideate and prototype their favourite solution. In the end, points were awarded for teamwork, participation, originality and quality of their prototype. Although all teams did an amazing job, special congratulations go out to our year 6 team including Josh, Sophie, Sawyer and Lucy and our year 5 team that included Gracie, Amelia and Mary. These teams just pipped the others at the post and took out the prize of attending a Scitech excursion next term.
To finish our week we had a very special guest, Dr Bruce Webber join us from the CSIRO. Dr Bruce is a Principal Research Scientist with CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, a Research Director with the Western Australian Biodiversity Science Institute, and an Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia. Dr Bruce facilitated an interactive presentation – teaching our students about the important roles all living creatures play as part of an ecosystem and particularly focussed in on our Herdsman lake. Thank you to Dr Bruce for sharing your valuable time. Your engaging and valuable message was a great way to finish off our STEAM week. We look forward to inviting you back to see our completed frog pond when it’s finished.
Please see the following links to follow Dr Bruce on social media:
https://twitter.com/DrBruceWebber/status/1429700940811051014?s=20
https://www.instagram.com/p/CS6I-onBqxl/
https://www.facebook.com/DrBruceWebber
Luke Johnson
