Robot wars, virtual reality, and Daleks
STEM ambassador Anisa Akinlami got children excited about science, by running a multi-activity event at her daughter’s school.
By Anisa Akinlami
In March 2019, I volunteered to help with a STEM fair at a friend’s child’s school in Oxfordshire. As a STEM ambassador, it was amazing to see all the fantastic activities and the joy on the children’s faces as they discovered that STEM topics were not only important but could be fun as well!
That’s when I decided that I wanted to run a similar event at my children’s school. But bigger!! This would be a challenge as none of the schools in our local area had ever attempted such an audacious project. There had been small events at the school and even some large events but none that required such a large degree of co-ordination and co-operation as this one. I was motivated to introduce the children to STEM topics and show them how vital and amazing they are.
The first step of course was to get buy-in from the school and the PTA, which was a struggle. Unfortunately, the National Curriculum does not focus very heavily on STEM at primary age and so getting teachers and administrators to agree to do something that is outside of the curriculum, especially with SATs looming, was not easy.
However, Francis Baily Primary School in Thatcham were eventually able to see past those factors and see the benefits of such an event. They also agreed to further the Schools Commitment to STEM by allocating the funding raised from the event to buying extra STEM equipment for the school and potentially running a STEM club.
The next hurdle to overcome was funding. And for this we could not be any more thankful to the Royal Society of Chemistry. Without their help the event would have had to have been much smaller in scale and could not have been any where near the success it turned out to be. Thank you, RSC!
While we were in the process of arranging the funding we also reached out for volunteers. We needed parents with a STEM background, career, or hobby to come forward and help show the children what STEM is all about. And wow did they come forward!
The idea was so new that we had an unprecedented response from the community. However, we still wanted more. So I reached out to anyone and everyone I could think of with a foot in the world of STEM.
As a result, we ended up with a huge number of really amazing events including: NATS National Air Traffic Control, Robot Wars, Virtual Reality Headset Displays, Heart Start Thatcham, The Hovercraft Club of Great Britain, maths escape rooms, the Newbury Astronomical Society, XTRAC, the local dentist, and a life-sized Dalek! And so many others there isn’t space to mention. I should also mention the many other parent, teacher and student volunteers who were not running events but who came to serve on the barbecue, look after presenters, show people around, run the raffle and do all of the other small but essential jobs on the day.
We got a lot of amazing feedback on the event, with many parents agreeing it was the best that the school had ever run. In total, with the help of the RSC, we were able to raise £5694.49, which makes it one of the most profitable events at the school. All of the money will go towards STEM equipment and activities for the children moving forward. However, this is secondary to the fact that we had well over 1000 people attend the event and were able to promote STEM and British Science week to a large number of children and adults in the local area, who had not heard of it before.
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