“Glorious Failures” Lead to STEM Success

 

Congratulations to the talented and dedicated Year 8/9 students who attempted our first STEM Floor Challenge earlier today.

Today’s design brief challenged participants to create a structure using one A4 piece of paper that could support twenty house bricks at least 4cm off the ground. In small groups, they enthusiastically spent their lunch break cleverly tackling the problem; whilst no one was able to stack all twenty bricks today (see leaderboard below), the students have vowed to return tomorrow to complete the task.

It was impressive to watch these students use a range of STEM learning skills to attempt to solve a seemingly impossible problem – they were innovative, flexible, persistent and collaborative in their approach. They communicated positively with each other and despite repeated “glorious failures”, maintained a determined attitude throughout the challenge.

I look forward to reporting on their ultimate success tomorrow afternoon.

~ Mr Shaun Thomas (Design Teacher)

Leave a Reply