STEM — Early years: Designing the future
At BGL, there’s plenty of opportunities to support local communities and get involved in some really awesome and inspiring projects.
One of these is our Inclusion and Diversity programme which aims to support STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) engagement from an early age, all the way through to employment. My colleague, Sarah, gives an overview of the programme in her blog here.
This is something really close to me, particularly helping young people understand more about technology and supporting teachers to unlock the resources they need to create engaging lesson plans.
In this blog post, I’ll be putting the spotlight on some of the amazing activities we’ve done to date to support the early years (those aged 5–11), and some of the plans we’ve got in the pipeline.
Peterborough STEM Festival
At last year’s Peterborough STEM Festival, we ran an escape room event which would challenge and encourage a variety of STEM skills, including:
- Coding challenges
- Solving cryptic puzzles
- Using a remote control car to solve a maze challenge
- Some good old brain teasers
Our stand at the STEM festival also included design challenges, the opportunity to learn how to code using html, Scratch and Python and we also had a few machines with Minecraft.
This year’s Peterborough STEM festival takes place on Saturday 12th October. This time, our main event will be based around robotics, which we’re super excited about! Stay on the look out for more details shortly…
Lego League
We’re also supporting the Lego League…
This is where groups of up children aged 6–9 research a project and identify potential real-world problems. They then design and build a LEGO model to demonstrate a solution. There were some truly inspiring designs at this year’s event, which focused on Mission Moon.
Helping schools adopt STEM
Alongside the big events, we are working with primary school teachers to help build children’s confidence in STEM, and support in creating engaging lesson plans to get young people designing and innovating.
Sarah explains the part of the project quite well in her blog:
We recognise that, in some instances, teachers can be the ‘jack of all trades’. They have a remarkable skill of changing their ‘teaching hat’ hour-by-hour — whether it be from mathematics to design, for example.
We work with and support teachers to engage children with STEM from an early age, whilst also instilling the message early on that technology is open to everyone. We work with them to create engaging STEM activities across the academic year, whether it’s through providing relevant materials or delivering workshops. We also work with teachers to help get some of their ideas into the classroom.
The Inclusion and Diversity programme is a great way for us to really make a difference in inspiring the STEM leaders of the future, and creating an industry which is more inclusive for everyone.
The team and I look forward to updating you with progress in future updates.
