STEAM: Superheroes

STEAM Week at the Primary School! Students from Foundation Stage to Year 5 will take part in various MIT inspired challenges from Wednesday 29 May to Friday 31 May 2019.

St Andrews International School Bangkok is pleased to announce a few STEAM days coming up - students from Foundation Stage to Year 5 will take part in various MIT-inspired challenges during our STEAM week which will run from Wednesday 29 May to Friday 31 May 2019.

STEAM encourages students to work together to combine their strengths, incorporating elements of maths, science, art and design, whilst also promoting key learning skills including:

• Critical thinking - finding solutions to problems

• Creativity - thinking outside the box

• Collaboration - working with others

• Communication - talking/sharing with others

Our projects will introduce the pupils to three MIT superheroes, enabling them to explore some of the work that the professors do. Some children may be designing their own experiments to measure human performance whilst others might be researching how animals have adapted and how we could use these ideas to enhance our lives or specific products. Some children may be looking at existing products and evaluating them to see how they can be improved or developed, maybe drawing upon inspiration from the animal kingdom - thinking about how to make something stronger, lighter, faster or more durable, whilst others will be looking to the animal world to gain inspiration for a superhero gadget.

If you want to prepare your child at home you could discuss the powers and strengths of a superhero and be thinking of some unusual creatures which have different strengths and abilities.

Which animals are good jumpers? Which are fast runners? Which features make a good swimmer? How are some animals camouflaged? How do others fly? Which animal is the fastest? How do some animals protect themselves?

Meet our MIT superheroes…

Super Natural

Looks to the animal world as inspiration for a superhero’s power and solutions to human problems.

Medical Marvel

It’s not the gadgets or the powers that make a superhero heroic; it’s how they improve the lives of others.

Epic Identity

Learn about wearable technology and its ability to improve human performance.

Through our projects, pupils will develop other crucial 21st Century skills.  21st Century skills are 12 attributes which have been identified that are necessary for our children to succeed in the ‘Information Age’ - essential in the age of the internet.  In addition to the four C’s above (critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication), pupils will focus upon Literacy skills which help to better comprehend the digital information available to them:

• Information literacy - understanding facts, figures, statistics and data

• Media literacy - understanding the methods and outlets in which information is published

• Technology literacy - better understanding the devices and resources available.

And life skills:

• Flexibility  - deviating from plans as needed

• Leadership - motivating a team to accomplish a goal, delegating and prioritising to ensure the job gets done.

• Initiative - starting projects, strategies and plans, seeing a job that needs to be done and doing it.

• Productivity - maintaining efficiency.

• Social skills - meeting, sharing, discussing with others.

We are hoping for an actionpacked, fun-filled, hands-on STEAM week, with lots of creative ideas and some insightful research to support ideas. The projects which take place will differ between classes and year groups - I will update our school facebook page during the week so that you can see the creativity occuring in the classrooms.

Any questions please get in touch with Miss Sarah - sarah.cook@standrews.ac.th.