S.T.E.A.M.

Another example of the S.O.L.E. philosophy was in Visual and Creative Arts where some of our students participated in a sequence of S.O.L.E. art projects with Amy from the Incinerator Gallery in Moonee Ponds. (photos on the right)

Many schools across the world are setting goals to enhance the curriculum with a focus on science & maths. The acronym “S.T.E.A.M.” is used to refer to the curriculum areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Maths.
 
Here at Belle Vue Park Primary School we are innovative and an example of this is our S.T.E.A.M. strategy which provide our students with a variety of fantastic learning opportunities across these areas.
 
Many of the activities are based on the S.O.L.E. philosophy where students learn together and have greater control, involvement and choice in their learning.
We have offered:
  • Coding in ICT;
  • An Arts project with Moonee Valley Council’s Incinerator Gallery;
  • Coding and Robotics with Aberfeldie Primary and Essendon Keilor College;
  • Fantastic Science Investigations with GTAC (Gene Therapy Access Centre) & the "Scientists in Schools" Program.
  • Robotics and electricity 
Part of the S.O.L.E. philosophy supports the notion of allowing students greater freedom and choice in their learning - in other words to trust the students.

An example of this was a partnership with Aberfeldie and Spotswood Primary schools to establish a S.O.L.E. connection where year 5 and 6 students met together to research and investigate what coding was. We ran S.O.L.E. inquiry sessions to gather our collective knowledge and the students selected a number of coding programs to investigate.

The students quickly established a rapport with each other and it was great to observe them mixing so well with the students from other schools learning with and from each other. Each school hosted visits and the students organised their groups. (Photos on the left show some of the students from these sessions).

S.O.L.E. Arts partnership with Incinerator Gallery in Moonee Ponds

We went to the large gallery space upstairs. There were big tarps on the floor and we all were able to wear art smocks to keep us clean.  It was another great session because we had to design and build a pendulum machine.

We used plastic cups, paint brushes, paint, sticks, tape, string and our imagination to create our machines and make our art pieces. We mixed our own paint colours.

Unfortunately Amy is moving to live and work in Hong Kong but we hope we can continue to do S.O.L.E. Art with the Incinerator Gallery in the future. It was fantastic.
 

 By Natasha T. Iman M. Hanede S. Rabia J. Rayan R. Cuong S.
Teshani M.  Zain E. Sulaiman H.

STEMpreneur coming in 2021

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Our school is participating in a a special 10 session project called STEMpreneur in term one 2022 where students in year 5/6 will develop their own STEM project supported by staff from ABCN (Australian Business Community Network) and Ernst Young.
The strategy involves:
  • A mentoring program to develop STEM and entrepreneurship skills in Yrs 5/6 primary school students and build key capabilities such as problem solving, critical thinking and creativity.
  • Delivered over 6 weeks –
    • Week 1 is a kick off at school (an innovation workshop run by ABCN, with mentors from one of our member companies);
    • Weeks 2 -5: classroom-based project work (led by teacher) with 2 online mentoring sessions
    • Week 6 is the final STEMpreneur Pitch (with a visit to the corporate workplace for students to pitch their ideas, connect with their mentors and celebrate their participation in the program)

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One of the many great session at the Incinerator Gallery in Moonee Ponds began with the  provocation … “Is science art?” and “How can pendulums be art?”

We did our research here at school and learned a lot about pendulums and how they have different patterns. Students then were challenged to plan and build their own pendulum machine.

At the gallery we talked about what we had found out about pendulums in our research and Amy showed us some pieces of art in the gallery.

"There was one piece that showed how light moves and how the earth rotates. There were other art pieces with moving parts like the eagle that had wings that you could move.

It was fun at the gallery because we joined in with the students from Aberfeldie Primary School to create our own art pieces based on pendulums."