March 2017 TCI Education Week will be observed March 6 -10, 2017 under the theme, “Success for Every Learner.” The week’s activities will include many educational activities in schools across the country, the Annual Fortis TCI Science Fair and the week will culminate with Teacher Appreciation Day.

 

STEM Activities for Education Week

 

During TCI Education Week, students from Senior Kindergarten to Grade 6 participated in a STEM activities afternoon.

 

The students visited various stations where they focused on building and creating structures and other objects.

   

The children were also reminded of the engineering design process in which they should plan, brainstorm and improve their creations.

   

STEM afternoon included the students building with paper, spaghetti and Legos!

   

The students displayed excellent teamwork as our older children guided the younger ones in completing their tasks.

   

STEM afternoon was a great way to demonstrate engineering for kids. The simple activities illustrated basic engineering principles.

   

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International School Introduces STEM lessons

  Read more about our STEM classes We are very excited to be introducing a new subject to the children from Grades 3-6.  It is called STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). This catchy acronym for these four academic fields has been pulsing through the collective consciousness for years. Each class will have 1 lesson of STEM, combining Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths, each week.

So what is the objective of STEM?

The goal of STEM education at ISTCI is to encourage students to take an interest in STEM subjects at an early age, which will benefit them when they move to upper school and then enter the jobs market.

What is STEM?

STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.  It has become more than a popular buzzword.  The principles of STEM are to encourage critical thinking, asking good questions, observation and exploration. STEM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines in an interdisciplinary and applied approach. Rather than teach the four disciplines as separate and discrete subjects, STEM integrates them into a cohesive learning paradigm based on real-world applications. There are a vast amount of occupations requiring firm foundations in STEM subjects and indeed as science and technology advances more new roles are being created everyday. Susan Solomon Yem in her Great School article states:

Everyone is talking about the importance of STEM education these days, and for good reason. Today’s kids will encounter a job market that is dominated by STEM fields, from health care, an industry that adds several hundred thousand new jobs each year, to computing and biotech, and more.

Why the need for STEM?

Businesses have seen a significant decrease in the number of graduates in these subjects. Also girls have a tendency to move away from these subjects and STEM lessons aim to make these subjects more accessible and exciting for all. Supporters of STEM believe there is a need to attract and educate more students in these fields and keep them engrossed throughout their primary, high school and college years. In recent years STEM education has gained momentum through teacher education, grants, and solid research-based curricular guidelines.

One thing is certain, STEM education will continue to expand and grow.   We are in a new period of time and all students need to be proficient in STEM fields, with early education providing the building blocks of understanding. - Learn more about STEM in education

This exciting addition to the curriculum of the International School further enhances the vision of the school - To challenge children, of all abilities, to achieve excellence in a wide range of academic activities. To equip them for the demands and opportunities of the 21st century, by offering a differentiated, exciting and rigorous curriculum. The specialist Science lab is already well utilised and lead by a specialist science teacher, who teaches children for Grades 3 – 6; the only Primary school in the region to offer this facility. Read more about our STEM classes