Community & Business
21 June, 2023
Greenmount’s super STEM stars
Greenmount State School and the Clifton Cluster of schools have been abuzz with STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) throughout term two, proving themselves to be both capable and highly motivated in their learnings.
There has been no greater time to be a student from a small school like Greenmount, with so many amazing opportunities presenting themselves with our students keenly taking on all they can.
Our Year 6 students jetted off to Clifton State High School for some amazing Lego Coding and Robotics fun as well as Circuits and a Wind Turbine Challenge led by Columboola EEC and Griffith University.
They learned about the complexities of circuits and the properties of insulators and conductors.
They problem solved, predicted outcomes, and experimented with new and emerging technologies.
Our students enjoyed building their robots and put their learnings into practice when they undertook their SPACE challenge.
This initiative was part of our transition to high school for our cluster.
Back in our own classroom we have made Tuesdays our STEM day.
Our year 5 and 6 students have been working with the QLD Virtual STEM Academy through the Queensland Academy for Science Mathematics and Technology.
They have been online working on STEM skill builder courses and introduction to digital learning.
In their course, ‘Intro to Design Thinking and Digital Learning’, students build their ability and fluency in using the iSee virtual platform.
They collaboratively access and gain experience in using a number of other software platforms (Tinkercad, Class Notebook and Padlet).
Through these courses our students are designing and building a Mars helicopter!
At the conclusion of the unit their individual design will be 3D printed and posted to our school.
Our students are really enjoying the new learning platform, and love working virtually with their peers throughout our cluster to complete challenges.
There has been some fabulous collaborative learning and we are enjoying watching our students’ STEM knowledge and enthusiasm grow. \t\t\t
- Kelly Stenzel
