During the last school holidays our school provided a holiday program for one day focusing on STEM related activities for girls only! I was asked to run a coding session which I was happy to do. Two past students each ran a session on bridge building and another on the immune system. The bridge building demonstrated engineering principles where the girls watched videos and experimented with strong structures to bear the most weight. Here is an outline of the session with links to relevant materials :Bridge Workshop lesson plan
The immune system session invited the girls to be doctors and learn how our bodies fight illness by watching videos, sharing knowledge and having fun with quizzes. The session finished with the participants decorating cupcakes with icing to look like immune cells…….afterwards they were devoured!! Yummy! Notes for the session :Immune system lesson plan
During my session the girls were introduced to Scratch. We made accounts and I took them through the basics. I demonstrated a simple game and the girls then went on to explore, create and make games…..it was heaps of fun and the girls thoroughly enjoyed sharing towards the end of the session. We finished by using ‘Tickle’ to program BB8 around a set course again lots of fun and failures!
The event enabled our girls to bring along a friend and enjoy the day together!
