School 4 science fair!

School 4 had a science fair and asked if we were willing to go and share our passion for science with the little ones and the day couldn't have gone better.

In the beginning, it proved quite difficult to choose an experiment that would teach the children something new as well as easily interest them.  We decided we would teach them about composite materials that came with an experiment that would be fun for them to do.  The experiment included making a bridge strong enough to hold 'wild animals' (toy animals) out of nothing but marshmallows and spaghetti and to make it more interesting we provided the groups with money and a prize (Fererro Rocher) to be won by the group with the best bridge.

The money was given for groups that wanted to buy more materials for their bridge, but they were informed that they would be penalised in the overall ruling of the bridges.  In the end most of the bridges were disasters and only one bridge was able to build a bridge strong enough to hold the weight of the animals.  Teaching the children proved to be less challenging than we had anticipated as they were a younger year group, so they were well behaved, and collaborating with my partner (Yarubbi) made what we were doing easier and more organised.

This teaching experience helped us in planning and initiating activities, because even though we were unsure of which experiment to do until about two days before the fair we managed to plan exactly what we were going to do and how we planned to do in the thirty minute lesson.  All in all, we had a great time with the children and would be more than happy to do it again. (pictures of the day are still with School 4)

Winter Activities Day!!

Although this years winter activities day was not the most successful, it was enjoyed by most of the students and teachers and gave us the opportunity to offer our services to the year 13s where they needed it and in the process, achieve some of the CAS outcomes such as the increased awareness of strengths and weaknesses as well as planned and initiated activities. Planning and following through with our activity made us realize that not everything goes according to plan and that it is important to consider all the variables that might affect the activity.

As we were four organizing the activity (Yarubbi, Pablo, Julien and I), the initial plan was to split the group and put them in two separate classes so that two of us would receive a group, but we later decided against it as we felt it would be more fun for the children if they were in the same room.  Even though this was the case, it was quite difficult to control them and made us realize we should have gone with the initial plan. The benefit of realizing this is that we can plan better for the future.