By Kirsten Harding, Head of Early Years
Last week I had the pleasure of escorting four of our Year 6 pupils, Chloe, Jai, Soyoon and Leroy, to Boston USA, to attend the Nord Anglia Education MIT STEAM festival. It was an extremely busy week, with the children taking part in lots of different fun, learning activities which included; MMMMaven workshop, a Marie Curie theatre performance, Pirate training, a MIT project called 2.009 and a trip to Boda Borg.
Over the next four weeks Chloe, Jai, Soyoon and Leroy will be writing about their experiences and letting you know which activity was their favourite one and why.
I am also very proud of these students, their behaviour all week was exemplary and they were great ambassadors for our school. Well done everyone!
By Jai Steinmetz
I liked the pirate training most because, well, I learnt how to be a pirate. I liked the fencing part the most because, when I did it, I got an adrenalin rush! No one could touch me! I was a beast! The archery was cool as well, but it was hard to build the correct type of bow. The sailing was cool, but my team didn’t win because they didn’t put any holes in their foil. We also built a pressure chamber. I built it first. I was building it alone and while I did so, the rest of the Sanlitun team looked up and Leroy said “Oh my gosh.” I feel the fencing will affect my future because I will do many fencing parties! Actually I will have one when I leave.
By Soyoon Kim
Being able to visit MIT was a great experience for me. Even though all the activities were fun and interesting, I liked the 2.009 challenge the most. The 2.009 is a famous challenge between engineers and students learning about product design where you have to design a product matching the theme (our theme was Carnival games). There were several teams; I was in the Mint team and nobody else from our school was in it except me. Somehow our group won although how we did that is a mystery. But I do agree that our team's product was very original.
It was a 2:2 game called "The Badminton/Volleyball Box Thing" and people had to wear boxes connected to each other with a string and use noodles to hit balloons onto the opponent team's side floor. After this challenge, I am inspired to design a product to help people escape the overdose of technology and make the world a better place.
By Chloe Huang
Although going to MIT was a brilliant experience and the geniuses of humankind had been displayed so conspicuously in front of us, I feel as if I am obliged to put the visit to Harvard on my list of favourites.
Looking back, I had actually really built up anticipation for the tour of this world famous university and it didn't fail to amaze me. I learnt a lot of interesting stories I had never heard before: the three lies of the John Harvard statue; the memorial of students in WW2; the fact that books inside the Harvard Library right now were actually rescued from the Titanic and the whispering arc demonstration we had.
Unexpectedly, it also helped me shape my aspirations of studying in Cambridge University more solidly, and pushed forward my future ambitions - if you have already been to both Harvard and MIT, what are the limits of your life?
By Leroy Lai
My favourite workshop was the MMMMaven workshop because it exceeded my expectations. I was only expecting to learn really basic things but actually I learnt more than I expected. The first thing you need to do is to pick two songs and set the BPM (Beats Per Minute) to the same and have on as the main melody. You can do this by setting the volume to play louder on one side. The left side is No.1, the right is No.2, in the middle there is a slider in which you can slide closer to the side of the main melody instead of changing the volume slider (is above main slider).
There are two types of loops. The first type is a normal loop in which the music (when you stop the loop) plays from the end of it. The second type works in a more interesting way, here is and example. If I do a loop for 1 minute, it starts playing one minute after the end of the loop.
