VSA STEAM Day 2022 – Mr. Hill’s Musings

At VSA, we just lately held our initial STEAM Working day. We’re now instructing and learning remotely in Hong Kong due to a rise in COVID circumstances, but we even now made it come about!

The celebration experienced numerous aims:

1. To encourage all issues STEAM
2. To give pupils resourceful, hands-on activities at residence
3. To ‘shake up’ remote understanding just after paying a number of weeks on the web by now
4. To give class lecturers a split from setting up and make it possible for them to catch up on supplying responses, and many others.

As mentioned, the Technological know-how and Innovation workforce (Fred Yue, John Hendrickse and I) took duty for the arranging so that course instructors didn’t have to (despite the fact that they have been far more than welcome to put together their personal actions if they needed to). We prepared eighteen distinctive routines and well prepared all set-to-use slides. Acquire a glimpse at the Padlet screenshots to see the array of pursuits!

When planning, we tried out to cater for the distinctive age groups and look at the assets that learners were being probably to have accessibility to at residence. Though most routines had been built to be standalone pleasurable, we also produced connections to present units of inquiry exactly where feasible. For case in point, Calendar year 3 college students had been mastering about light-weight and seem.

Course academics then selected from our prompt lessons, copied the slides to personalise them, and facilitated the lessons. This is where by we (the TI team) end using credit rating. It was the enthusiastic class lecturers who produced the magic occur and ensured that the day was a accomplishment. Planning is uncomplicated facilitating all those classes on Zoom with twenty-8 little ones is the tough portion (in particular with the tiny types). They all did a great work!

As you can see, we requested students and instructors to add their creations to our Padlet. I have hardly ever seen a busier Padlet! Together with extra routines from the course teachers, there are about 20 columns and over four hundred posts! I desire I could share it on below but I far better not for privacy reasons. I hope you can see from the screenshots how amazing it is!

I was confused with pleasure as I popped into the classes and watched the Padlet fill up. It manufactured my heart so satisfied! The kids experienced an absolute blast and the teachers had been remarkable. This was a brilliant crew hard work!

As I stated in my earlier blog site post, I will not be at VSA following year. I’ll be Deputy Principal at the new sister faculty in Shenzhen. I hope STEAM Working day can be an annual event at each universities. With any luck ,, they will all be in man or woman in the foreseeable future! Fingers crossed!

In the meantime, I consider we proved that distant mastering does not have to necessarily mean Zoom, Google Classroom, Seesaw or even screens! Young children can be inventive at household. In point, working all-around limitations with restricted methods forces us to be even additional resourceful.

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