STEAM - Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths
The ‘National STEM Agenda’ ensures that students are not only excited by Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths but also that they are encouraged and well equipped to pursue a career in STEM areas, should this be of interest to them. At Invicta Grammar School, STEM has been extended to STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths, as the design stage is vitally important to any engineering problem. These subjects are at the heart of the curriculum and a huge range of STEAM opportunities are actively supported and promoted - both in and out of lessons.
STEAM opportunities are not confined to lessons and an extensive extra-curricular programme allows students to partake in a wide variety of clubs, including maths club, chess club, robotics club, CanSat, beekeeping and KS3 Science. CanSat is a competition where students design and create a small satellite that fits inside a can, which is then dropped from 500m, taking atmospheric readings as it falls to earth under a parachute. The robotics club enter several competitions, both local and national, throughout the year with their VEX robots and there is the chance to design, build and programme the robots.
Students’ curiosity of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths is supported through trips to STEAM facilities and activity days which are too numerous and frequent to list. However, the highlights include:
- The national Big Bang festival at Birmingham NEC.
- The local Big Bang festival at Discovery Park, Sandwich
- The South of England Big Bang festival at South of England Showground
- The National Space Centre, Leicester
- Disneyland Orlando.
Invicta Grammar School also supports the national drive for STEAM throughout the year and runs fantastically exciting events for national Science Week and STEAM month. These have included:
- Pig Head Dissection.
- Rat Dissection.
- Fruity Batteries – light up a bulb with an orange!
- Minecraft.
- Newspaper Towers.
- Königsberg bridge problem
- Squishy Circuits – investigating resistance using ‘play-doh’ of different conductivities.
To summarise, STEAM is not something else that we do at Invicta, it is in all aspects of school life which gives our students a brighter start to their careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths. It is for this reason, that we have a significant number of students progress to study these areas at a much higher level at University.
