Year 5, MARS & STEM in Term 1

What an awesome term of STEM we had in year 5! The main objectives were to learn about the planet Mars, space missions to Mars, the role of NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the people that work there, discover if humans could live on Mars and what life would be like there. So, …

Code.org visit to Ravo

On Wednesday 30 March Code.org software engineer Brendan Reville paid a visit to Ravo to talk with students about his life, career, Code.org and the Hour of Code. I met Brendan a few weeks earlier at the Future Schools Expo at the Australian Technology Park in Sydney and I was impressed with his talk and …

Pluto, polygons and Sphero

Today's Sphero lesson with my two year 4 classes focused on coding Sphero to trace polygons on the floor. Students were not very familiar with polygons and some of the other terms in the lesson, however, during the starter it was evident that some girls had some knowledge, enough for the lesson at least. Students were …

Amazing Skype lesson with Andrea Boyd – ESA

On Wednesday 16 March I arranged for the whole of year 5 to Skype with European Space Agency engineer Andrea Boyd. The Skype meeting was to compliment the unit I was leading about space, Mars and the Curiosity rover. Thanks to Jackie Slaviero I made contact with Andrea and we arranged the chat in just …