On Saturday 19 March we had a Year 7 and Year 8 Brilliant Futures workshop happening at QAHS, involving in total over one hundred Brilliant Futures students, as well as nineteen Year 11 and 12 STEM Mentors.
The Year 7s took part in their first ever weekend event which was the Collaborative Learning and Global Thinking workshop. Participating in group discussions and learning about the International Baccalaureate Learner Profile Characteristics, then everyone went outside for a rotation of six activities involving various kinds of group problem solving and different types of conceptual learning. Types of learning included thinking about: different cultures, geometry, maths, music, visual art, engineering, and physics. Generally, the most amount of excitement came from the group task that involved building marshmallow towers using marshmallows and spaghetti. Overall Year 7s were introduced, with the help of STEM mentors and teachers, to the concepts of Theory of Knowledge, and the IB's Learner Profile characteristics.
While that was happening the Year 8s took part in Wind Turbine experiments in the Science labs, delivered by the Principal of Toohey Forest Environmental Education Centre, Darren Shepherd. This is a hands-on activity for students in which they learn about testing variables in the design of miniature wind turbines, and the effect these variables have on the generation of power. Students learn to observe, record, and hypothesise based on their experiments. We look forward to our return visit to Toohey Forrest EEC next term, where students will get to learn about gathering data from field observations in the Toohey Forrest, and analysing water organisms via microscope.
Thank you to the STEM Mentors who helped on the day, as well as assisting teachers Mary-Anne Wood and Daven Naiker and Principal Vanessa Rebgetz.
Patrick Emery
Brilliant Futures Coordinator