Year 6 connect with British Science Week

To mark British Science Week 2023, and in addition to the extra science activities that all girls have been doing with their teachers, our Year 6 girls have been participating in a series of bespoke sessions this week, led by Mr. Severy, Junior School computer science coordinator.  These sessions were based around learning material and activities produced by the BT Community Engagement Team especially for this event.

They feature a range of industry leading experts exploring real life, ground-breaking developments in STEM research, under the general theme of ‘Connections’.  The areas covered included Cyber Security, Smart Cities, Extended Reality & The Metaverse, Drones, Robotics, and Digital Manufacturing.

 The videos were used as a starting point for wide-ranging, whole-class discussions about how these technological developments might affect the girls’ lives in the future and the global issues that they might be able to solve.  The level of interest and insight that the girls displayed, and the maturity with which they were able to discuss serious and complex issues was extremely impressive.  

Discussions spanned a huge range of subjects as diverse as computer viruses, international espionage, data security, the ‘Internet of Things’, air pollution and real-time sensing, the ‘greenhouse effect’ and climate change, autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, strawberry-picking robots, and even horse manure as an early city pollutant!

We hope that the girls have been inspired by exploring some of the real-world applications of STEM subjects and can see their own potential for a possible future career in a STEM-related industry.

 STEM at St Mary's is taught from Reception onwards, putting our girls ahead of the curve.