STEAM Week 2021: Taming Extreme Weather

ISM students have recently studied the art of survival through a series of exciting experiments and insightful discussions.

Our multifaceted STEAM Week 2021 was indeed a success. Each and every campus prepared its own unique themes and topics.

Carly Wilding-Reid, Science Teacher and STEAM Coordinator on Krylatskoe Upper Campus:

Extreme weather can have disastrous consequences for affected areas and communities, making forecasting and communicating incredibly important.

Upper Primary students learnt how to create news programmes to broadcast essential information on preparing for events and built a dam to protect a flooded area. They also learnt how technology could help communities in these events by using robots to navigate a course and deliver supplies.

Secondary students explored many aspects of the theme and developed MIT Learner ambitions through an interdisciplinary approach. For example, they wrote a storm scene from ‘Macbeth’, created a map of Russian weather catastrophes, produced a soundscape, created storm chasers and used data compare to and investigate trends in different countries. 

The week accumulated with an activity day in which students completed obstacle courses, tried to escape a cyclone and built a shelter to withstand different types of disasters. 

Richard Barry, Year 4 Teacher and STEAM Coordinator on Krylatskoe Lower Campus:

Severe storms, survival skills and problem-solving were at the forefront of our STEAM week at Lower Campus. Throughout the week, the children were presented with problems with no set solutions, and they had to learn to collaborate together to solve them.

Across the age ranges, the children created Lego Zip Wires to rescue neighbours from flood damage; they built shelters to survive outside after a hurricane had destroyed their home; in pairs, the children used 'Lego WeDo' to create a flood gate to prevent future flooding following a storm. EYFS became superheroes, Year 1 explored the effects of climate change, Year 2 built boats to transport people away from danger, Year 3 built hurricane-proof houses and Year 4 built bridges to connect our campus with the upper campus to future proof our school.

The children had a blast, and it was great to see so many creative ideas develop throughout a week of child-led learning.

Mikhail Suetin, EAL Tutor and STEAM Coordinator on Rosinka Campuses:

Do you like it when it rains? What do you do if a hailstorm begins? Is it safe to go outside during a blizzard?

Students at ISM Rosinka spent the last week of the first half-term learning about all kinds of extreme weather and how to deal with it!

From learning how to have a safe picnic outdoors with Freddy the Frogcaster in EYFS, to making their own rain gauges in Year 1, to creating weather stations in Year 3, to designing anemometers in Year 5, to using Spheros in Year 6 as part of an extreme weather rescue mission, our young learners have explored and solved various problems and designed multiple structures capable of withstanding all kinds of weather! In PE, students studied First Aid and played rescue games, while in Music, they composed their own lyrics for a weather song! Lastly, many of our Primary students had a go at Tinkercad, where they created 3D models of shelters, bridges and even boats!