STEM week

It's been an incredible STEM week at Wrenbury Primary School as our children have experienced a huge range of science, technology, engineering and maths. From using teamwork and design skills to help solve world poverty, to making predictions and observations in early years, to even learning about the world of marine biology, we've been blown away by some incredible new experiences.

On Tuesday, Key Stage 1 and 2 took on the Squashed Tomato Challenge. We heard about Suchana Mijar, a young farmer from Nepal who had to carry heavy loads to market across challenging terrain, even whilst she was pregnant. The children considered the impact that this had on Suchana and farmers like her, linking them to the Global Goals for Sustainable Development. We then learned about how engineering and technology had helped Suchana when the charity, Practical Action developed and built a rope system to transport crops and produce safely down the mountains.

Then it was our turn! Key stage 2 set about designing and building their own systems to transport tomatoes. They had to travel quite a distance and we did have one or two instances of squashed tomatoes along the way. Everyone worked brilliantly in their teams, testing and redesigning if they needed to, before evaluating which system worked best.

In Key stage 1, we investigated which materials would be best to wrap the tomatoes in to keep them safe on their journey. We explored a huge range of different materials and talked about their properties. Then, wrapped them up before running, hopping, skipping with, and even dropping our tomatoes. We found that cotton wool was the best material to use because it was soft and thick, but the tin foil was too rough and too thin to work, leading to some very squashed tomatoes!

Our early years children have also had lots of different experiments and discoveries to make. We've been building boats out of different materials and building the strongest, tallest towers we can. We've made lots of discoveries and made some excellent predictions — already starting to think like scientists and engineers!

Finally, Base 5 were also lucky enough to have a visit from a marine engineer on Tuesday. John came to speak to Base 5 about his work and gave us some wonderful demonstrations. We learnt about the different forces that act upon a boat, how to calculate the density of a material and how to change the shape of something in order to make it float. We used this knowledge to build out own boats out of just cardboard and tin-foil, with some boats, which weighed just 6 grams, being able to keep over 500g of marbles afloat. Amazing engineering, Base 5.

A huge thank you to everyone who took part in STEM week, particularly parents who were able to join our assembly on Tuesday to share some of the wonderful work our children had produced. We really appreciate your support!