Year 8 STEM Workshop
On Tuesday 19th December, our Year 8 were the lucky beneficiaries of an active STEM workshop provided by “Spark”, a charitable organisation that aims to develop young people’s employability skills and knowledge so that they are better prepared for and able to effectively transition into the workplace. Students considered different roles and the employability skills required at Heathrow Airport and then engaged in a fun activity where they had to programme a robotic vehicle to follow a particular path and perform certain routines. Students were divided into groups where they had to perform a particular role, including project manager, project designer and programmer. They also had to work together to try and ensure the product was effective, well designed and performed all the tasks required of it.
The students were actively engaged in putting the code together that was required to enable the robotic vehicle to perform the set task. The activity was stimulating and fun and built on the students previous programming and coding skills acquired using “Scratch”. The students were excellent in their attitude and application. One group in particular from 8E was identified by the organisers as being the first group ever to complete the task fully in the time allocated. This was an amazing achievement since the charity informed us that they had visited hundreds of schools over the last year. “Spark” were also very praiseworthy of the positive attitude, behaviour and excellent application of all the Year 8 cohort. It was certainly a very rewarding and stimulating event which all students very much enjoyed. Students were left enthused by the experience and much more enlightened on careers, STEM employment roles and robotics.
