Madinat Khalifa Primary Headlines | Monday 22 January

Dear Parents,

Full STEAM ahead!

We had an absolutely fantastic week of learning centred on STEAM education.

Walking around the campus you would have seen students programming self-driving cars, testing designs and materials to create aerodynamic paper planes, varying the size and length of wings to test the flight of helicopters, utilising a wide range of materials to protect eggs falling from a great height, testing how the angle of trajectory effects the flight of rockets and creating their own wind tunnels to test the aerodynamics of different shapes to name but a few of the many challenges set!

You would have also heard the excited chatter of students as they designed their own scientific tests, made predictions, discussed their results and drew conclusions. Over the course of the week, our corridor displays will be updated to reflect each year group’s STEAM learning.

Another key factor in the success of STEAM week were the visits and presentations from experts in a range of STEAM-related fields.

We welcomed Bjorn Luetjens and Billy Thalheimer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). They are both involved in cutting-edge projects linked to automated vehicles (Bjorn) and aviation design (Billy). They spoke passionately, engaging our students in exciting demonstrations. We also welcomed Major Sean Kenney from the USA Airforce base who talked about the wide range of technology employed by the airforce. The highlight of his visit was students getting to test out the night-vision goggles!

Just as impressive were the number of our parents who gave up their time to talk to the students about their areas of expertise. I’d like to thank Ernesto Acuña, Hans Lelieveld, Juan Pablo Moyano and Rachael Carliss who spoke about their roles within Qatar Airways and Krzysztof Moscicki who spoke about the Doha Metro Rail project.

I know that having such an array of fantastic role-models has inspired the students, many of whom are now talking about how they would like to be a scientist, pilot or engineer when they grow up!

I’d also like to thank our parents who joined classes throughout the week to help design, build and test a wide range of contraptions as well as those who joined Mr McGlade and Mr Porter for our STEAM parent workshop on Tuesday.

Have a great week!

Jimmy Frawley, Head of Primary