STEM Week Review – Teesside High School

Thursday 29 April 2021 | By Samantha Hockney

The week before the Easter holiday, the children in the Prep School enjoyed a busy STEM week. This year, we focused on the theme of Our Diverse Planet and this certainly gave us a lot of food for thought.

At the beginning of the week, we thought about ‘diverse people’ and their differences and abilities, acknowledging that everyone is unique and has different strengths. The different classes explored this theme in a number of ways, including presentations about autism, Asperger’s and Downs Syndrome, through blindfolded playground games and by designing new human species.

During the week, we welcomed lots of virtual visitors from a range of international businesses. The children had the opportunity to explore the world of accounting from AbacusBean, the area of global transportation from Hogg Global Logistics, and a range of different branches of engineering from Sir Robert McAlpine and Lomon Billions. All of our speakers gave a valuable insight into their line of work and enthused the children in order to give them some more possible careers in which to aspire to.

We also focused on bees for a day and thought about their importance in the world. This day saw the children having the opportunity to make bee bombs using seeds that attract bees, and taste honey. During the day the children were given a special Forest School session to complete a bee fact scavenger hunt and to make some bee hotels. The children were also treated to a virtual visit from John, a keen bee keeper from the Tees Bees group. John showed us inside one of his hives and shared a wealth of information with the children. The array of questions following his talk certainly showed how much the children had learnt and how it had raised their curiosity into this area.

Later in the week, the children completed a morning of escape room challenges. There were 8 challenges to tackle, all linked to our theme. On the completion of the challenge the children revealed a three digit code which allowed them to open the padlock and to find the letter they needed to ultimately be able to unscramble the anagram to escape!

To round off, the children enjoyed an art challenge, this time working in their houses. Cleveland House completed a world map made up of people from around the globe, identifying their uniqueness. Woodside completed some fantastic landscape paintings and Victoria completed a wonderful display thinking about the different environments around the world.

The children’s quotes sum up the week really well.

I enjoyed all of the activities that we did at STEM week. The activity that I liked the most was the Bee Bombs and the virtual visitor John from Tees Bees, he was really interesting. I really liked STEM week this year. Martha

I have enjoyed seeing visitors on Google Meet because I got to meet interesting people. They were interesting because of their hobbies, their jobs, their personalities and businesses. I have also enjoyed seeing the teachers in bee costumes! Pierre

Although I hate messy things I enjoyed making the bee bomb. I liked moulding the mud into shapes and mixing it all together. I also really enjoyed tasting the honey. My favourite honey I tried was the set one. It was really smooth and tasted very sweet. Lexie

The Prep School certainly had a busy week but there was a great buzz as the children had the opportunity to explore STEM in a variety of exciting ways.  Thank you to those who added such value to our children’s experience.

Mrs Kennedy