Future Focused Learning prepares students across all curriculum areas and learning stages with skills and capabilities to thrive in a rapidly changing and interconnected world.
STEM highlights have included a range of newly purchased resources, training, curriculum and educational experiences for students that emphasised creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking skills.
Implementation of STEM PBL Elective course in Year 8.
Students were asked to participate in a Sharktank business startup scenario that required them to collaborate in teams to design, prototype, evaluate and present a business idea to the SHARKS (Year 11 Business Studies and Year 10 Commerce students). Students created a business plan, used 3D printing for prototyping and created 3D videos using Virtual Reality to spruik their ideas.
Breakout Boxes
Use of Breakout Boxes in classrooms to facilitate collaboration. Students worked together, thinking critically to solve complex problems related to their curriculum that allow them to break the locks into boxes that cascade to other problems until they beat the clock and arrive at the solution. Our High Achiever group in Years 11/12 had the opportunity to put their breakout box skills to work by winning the Breakout Room competition at Newspace late last year.
Tech Girls are Superstars
WBHS also entered the Tech Girls are Superstars Movement with some excellent results in the National Competition including 1st in the state for Layla S and her Hop-In car sharing app. Our TGSM students had to use all of their future-focused skills to come up with a business plan and smartphone app that addressed one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
STEM Industry Schools Partnership (SISP) Awards
Layla S received her SISP Award for achievement in STEM and Mr Husband received the Hunter SISP Diversity Award for WBHS,s achievement in promoting gender diversity in STEM subjects and programs.
Drones in STEM
WBHS also acquired six new drones and Lego Mindstorm units which we used to teach coding and engineering in STEM classes in Years 8/9/10. Students programmed their movements and adapted them to fly in the air or go into hovercraft mode.
Minecraft
Minecraft was used to help students create 3D models of structures to place around the school. This video shows how structures can be taken out of minecraft and placed into Augmented Reality to make an amazing 3D presentation.
We look forward to providing further opportunities in STEM (Year 8) and iSTEM (Years 9 and 10), to create engaging learning environments and opportunities for students to flex their future-focused learning muscles.
