STEAM Week at the International School of Moscow

STEAM Week at the International School of Moscow From Early Years all the way to Year 13, ISM students designed their own vehicles, flew their own airplanes and helicopters, launched their own rockets and sailed their own boats. From circuitry, to coding to 3D modelling, to simple robotics, to virtual and augmented reality, teachers and students at the International School of Moscow did their absolute best to explore the past, the present and, most importantly, the future of transport during STEAM week.

How did you get to school today? How are you planning to travel on holiday? What do you think cars will look like in the future? Do cars even need drivers? Are jetpacks an efficient way to travel? During the final week before the October holidays, ISM students were faced with a plethora of questions and problems regarding transport!

From Early Years all the way to Year 13, they designed their own vehicles, flew their own airplanes and helicopters, launched their own rockets and sailed their own boats. From circuitry to coding to 3D modelling to simple robotics to virtual and augmented reality, teachers and students at the International School of Moscow did their absolute best to explore the past, the present and, most importantly, the future of transport.

On the Krylatskoe Upper Campus, we explored the possibilities of future transport and tackled many of its challenges. All students were presented with the challenge of trying to design an interstellar transport for the future. From Year 5 to Year 13, students created computer and physical models, detailed blueprints and presentations. In Primary, students designed futuristic cities using Lego and computer programmes. To get ideas for their tasks we visited the Experimentium museum! Children tried to solve issues like self-driving cars, green spaces, building bridges and efficient and fast transport by designing and building a Hyperloop train. In Secondary, students learnt more about the topic of transport in the specific context of their subjects like writing about time travel in English, building magnetic trains in Science or drawing maps in Art. The week culminated during STEAM Friday when students had a full day of transport challenges including roller-coasters, pasta bridges and a whole school STEAM exposition at the Ivan Gromov Gymnasium. 

On the Lower Campus, we went on a ‘road trip around Russia’ and exploring many of the amazing sights of this country. Firstly, the children built purposeful vehicles out of different STEAM materials or online. The first stop was Sochi where the children had to overcome flooding; they built dams, painted flooding pictures with water colours and used LegoWeDo. Then, we proceeded to Dagestan, the children had to think of ways to defeat landslides. They built walls, used their Maths skills to predict how rocks would fall and made interesting videos of how landslides are formed. Then we trekked all the way to the Ural Mountains, where the children were faced with the threat of bears. They made bearproof campsites out of plasticine, EYFS had a bear hunt and feast, and we painted bear pictures. The penultimate drive was to Siberia in the polar climate. The children planned and made winter clothes, recorded temperatures and drew line graphs and built winter proof schools on Minecraft. Finally, we travelled all the way to Kamchatka where there are many volcanoes. Practically, the children made volcanoes and tested them with cola and mentos, measuring the height of different volcanoes and painted beautiful volcano pictures. Overall, the children were very resilient, overcoming several problems during their Rustic Russian Road Trip.  

In Rosinka, we held several challenges throughout the week. Leading up to STEAM Week, we held our paper airplanes competition, which ended on the final day of the half-term. We are very proud of the winning team, Vietnam Airlines, whose airplane travelled the entire length of the school hall! Each class was also challenged with designing a bridge sturdy enough for a robot, Sphero, to go over, and tall enough for it to go under. It all culminated in the Friday assembly, where class representatives had to navigate the robots through their class bridges. Students at EYFS enjoyed working with BeeBots, and Primary students learned how to create 3D models in Tinkercad!  

Full STEAM ahead, ISM!