STEAM Excellence at Emirates

We were delighted to return to the Arsenal Emirates Stadium in London yesterday for the Teen Tech City of Tomorrow competition and even more delighted that we came away with prizes!

The national showcase brings together ideas from young people all over the country to share structural engineering designs which aim to make the world a better place and our Year 7s have greatly enjoyed the opportunity to get involved.

“We had teams winning in their categories and also two teams who topped the winners’ lists!” grinned Peter Marshman, Head of Computer Science, and Leighton Park’s Teen Tech event co-ordinator.  “One of these was for Year 7 girls’ team who won ‘Environmental and Sustainable Excellence’ category which I think is very topical for the School with sustainability being at the heart of our Quaker ethos. Congratulations also go to the team who won the ‘Health and Well Being Space’ category for their imaginative and innovative ideas.”

Last year Leighton Park took part in the TeenTech City of Tomorrow, entering four teams of Year 7 students in the national final as part of the School’s award winning iSTEM+ project.  One of TeenTech suggested models for this project is for a secondary school to act as a ‘hub’ and to share their materials with prep and primary schools in the local area.

In our continued efforts to provide unique learning opportunities for local primary school aged students and as part of our STEAM strategy, we invited St Mary’s Prep School, Henley, to Leighton Park in March take part in the 2019 event with help from our Year 8 young STEAM ambassadors. Some of these ambassadors were finalists in the 2018 TeenTech City of Tomorrow competition and were given the freedom to assist in planning the content for our visitors. The ambassadors were each assigned to groups of four Year 5 children to help lead them through the project, act as role models and support as mentors.  Each group needed to apply their knowledge of science, technology and engineering to design an innovative building of the future using recycled household materials. The project aims to promote good citizenship, sustainability, teamwork and creative problem solving in the creation of a building that improves quality of life by being kinder to the environment and safer for its inhabitants.

At the end of the design and build day on Wednesday 27^th February, each group of students from St Mary’s School designed and rehearsed a presentation with help from the Leighton Park young ambassadors and were able to draw on what went well, what didn’t go so well, what they would do next time and each and every group thanked their mentors.  One of the visitors, when asked what the best thing about their building was replied “…the best thing is that it was made by all of us” which highlighted the what the fantastic TeenTech City of Tomorrow project is all about – working together and sharing great moments.

We were pleased to be situated next to St Mary’s at the Teen Tech national final in London on Wednesday 3^rd March and delighted to witness their success at the event. St Mary’s students, Tommy, Tilly and Roxy were thrilled to be announced as winners for their vision of ‘Nature Tech’, the best domestic building. More excitement soon followed as Max, Sam and Ben won with their design for an environment friendly ‘Lazy Lagoon’ house. To round off the day, Emily, Nate and Conal were worthy winners with their towering ‘Summer Flights’ structure in the category of a mixed-use building. The St Mary’s teachers accompanying the group, Simon Dawes and Linda Wild, commented. “We all had a great day and you were spot on about how well organised and enjoyable it would be.”