This coming week schools celebrate Science Week.  Woodend likes to celebrate this week in Term 4 Week 1 as this gives students and families a greater opportunity to be involved.

This year we are excited to introduce a STEAM Week at Woodend Primary School!

In Term 4 Week 1 (Monday 15th to Friday 19th October 2018) our school community will engage in all things related to “STEAM”.

What is “STEAM”?  STEAM is an educational focus on science, technology, engineering, the arts and maths (STEAM) concepts across the wider curriculum.

Why “STEAM”?

Business and industry publicise that future-ready employees need to have multiple areas of expertise or at least appreciate how a range of skills fit together.  These ’employees’ are our students. When working in STEAM settings we often see students making connections between concepts and solving problems in new and exciting ways. They demonstrate this by active engagement, their discoveries visible in enthusiastic “aha” moments.  Woodend has added the “A” in STEAM to include humanities, languages,  dance, drama, music, visual arts, design and new media.  Leonardo Da Vinci is an early example of someone using STEAM to make discoveries.

You may have heard of STEM learning.  The main difference between STEM and STEAM is STEM explicitly focuses on scientific concepts. STEAM investigates the same concepts, but does this through inquiry and problem-based learning methods used creatively.

We particularly focus on STEAM Week being a parent engagement initiative This means that we strongly encourage families to be involved in events.  These include:

  • Parents/carers’ occupations – parents/carers offering to share information about their occupation related to Science, Technology, Engineering, The Arts and/or Maths
  • Investigation – during Term 3 holidays, families investigate and produce an item for display at our STEAM Expo
  • STEAM Expo – attending our STEAM Week Expo – this will take place on Thursday 18/10 evening and all day Friday 19/8/18.

The Committee has planned several other interesting events:

  •  incursions for students with our Tall Poppy Scientists to work with us
  • incursions for students with our feeder high schools, Seaview and Hallett Cove to work with us
  • local kindergartens and preschools, aged care centre residents and local politicians to attend our STEAM Week Expo

Our STEAM Week Committee has had several meetings and we have one parent rep on this Committee.  If you are interested in joining our team to prepare for this exciting week, please contact the school and we will welcome your support and ideas.  Our next meeting is this Wednesday 15th October at 3.30pm.

We will keep you informed of STEAM Week updates throughout this term.  Our next post will have some sites that you may like to view for ideas and information linked to your family investigation.

Here are some photos of our Science Week events in previous years: