STEAM Festival: Inspiring Young Minds

27th November 2023

Our recent STEAM festival was designed to inspire and challenge pupils through a range of exciting and enriching off-timetable activities.

As well as Year 5 and 6 pupils from St Margaret's, the invitation was also extended to a number of children from Little Reddings Primary and Ashfield Junior School in Bushey.

The children participated in a half-day workshop of activities, delivered by TA Education and supported by Adobe and Sky. Sessions included a LEGO coding challenge, where pupils were required to programme a robot to collect a LEGO block and deliver it to a designated drop zone, using the latest version of the Micro:Bit.

The children took part in several other activities including using VR headsets to create their own 3D space before exploring virtual worlds through the lens of the headset, and using video editing software pupils were able to edit and create a short movie clip.

The integration of STEAM within the curriculum helps to nurture children's critical thinking and problem-solving abilities from an early age. As they engage in open-ended tasks, children learn to analyse, evaluate, and find creative solutions to real-world challenges. From critical thinking to boosting curiosity, students are encouraged to weed out irrelevant and misleading information, asking deeper questions about the how and the why. Encouraging pupils from both St Margaret's and our local community to work together in a focused way and to come up with thoughtful solutions to real-word problems, was key to the session.

Miss Hyams, a teacher who was involved in the STEAM Festival told us, “It has been really inspiring to see our pupils challenge themselves in new ways and to grasp these exciting opportunities and concepts with both hands."

“The children were fully engaged in all of the activities, which for many, were totally new experiences. They, like all of the teachers, also learned lots of new skills while having a great deal of fun in the process”

Engineering also formed part of the range of activities, and pupils were challenged to improve the EPC rating of their Minecraft houses by adding solar panels, changing lightbulbs and deciding what will make their houses the most energy and heat efficient.

Mr Wells, a Year 5 Teacher from Little Reddings Primary School in Bushey also commented on the day. He said “A day like this is an opportunity for us to really stretch and challenge our most able pupils, and is something that we would find hard to replicate in school.”