Exploring extreme weather creates a whole lot of STEAM at NAISHK!

Article by Declan Barney, Primary STEAM Lead

It’s such a pleasure to see the first MIT challenge of the year taking place with our new Year 2 arrivals in Lam Tin. This year, the MIT team have set Nord Anglia students 3 challenges around the theme of ‘Extreme Weather’ and our first one was introduced by Dr. Kerry Emanuel. He’s an MIT professor who is totally into tropical cyclones. No really—he’s goes into them, by choice! Professor Emanuel is a premier meteorologist and climate scientist, and one of the world’s leading authorities on tropical cyclones (more commonly called hurricanes, or typhoons, depending on where you live in the world). He has experienced many of these storms from the cockpit of small, strong airplanes while running field experiments, and the challenge which was set for our Year 2 students was to build a structure which could withstand extreme winds.

To begin the project, the students were immersed into the dangers of cyclones by looking at Hong Kong’s famous Mangkhut storm, making the project even more relevant and meaningful to them. After this, the students began to ideate whereby they came up with potential solutions to the problem of increasing wind speeds within the construction industry. Once they had decided on their best idea for a secure structure, they began the design stage where their idea was planned out. Next came the build and test phase, where their models were built and stood in front of some powerful outdoor fans to see if they could maintain their structural integrity. In this phase, the students were encouraged to tinker with their buildings; to make changes and improvements to their models so that they better solved the original problem. The final stage was an evaluation of their project, where successes were celebrated and next steps were identified. The students loved presenting their project to their parents in our Maker Space.

The world of STEAM is where solutions to climate change will be found, and so introducing the students to the different ways of thinking, doing and being within a STEAM context have provided them with valuable skills which they will continue to develop throughout their time at NAIS and beyond.  Throughout each of the phases in this unit of work, our teachers focused their attention to the process by which the students arrived at their final product, encouraging the development of ‘soft skills’ such as communication, negotiation and conflict resolution, leadership, responsibility and teamwork. The route the students took to arrive at their final product is perhaps more important than the final product itself. One of the pillars of our School Vision is to support our students in developing these skills using real-world problem solving. This helps them to become more socially confident, globally aware citizens who are creative, inquiring and collaborative.  The Year 2 team have done an amazing job with this STEAM project and I am so excited about the projects coming up throughout this year, and the excellent learning experiences this will provide for all our students.