Back to Issue 428 10 September W9T3

Junior Engineers’ Holiday Workshops

STEM education is an interdisciplinary approach to learning which integrates the study of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics into cohesive learning experiences.

Within St Catherine’s Junior School, our STEM program challenges students to draw connections between their learning and the real world. In doing so, it equips them with critical thinking, problem solving, creativity and communication skills, all necessary for future success in a wide range of career pathways.

Over the Term 3 school holidays, St Catherine’s School will be hosting Junior Engineers’ Workshops, designed to educate, entertain and inspire our Junior School students. Workshops include coding foundations to game design and are developed to spark the imagination, creativity and STEM skill development of primary aged students.

“These workshops will be beneficial for our students, as they provide significant allocations of time to learn, explore and develop skills in coding and robotics. The students will have dedicated coding and robotics experts and specialised equipment, allowing them to really enhance their STEM based skills,” explains Junior School STEM educator and Deputy Head of Barbreck, Mr Luke Russell.

Workshop dates and descriptions are provided below. Further information on the Junior Engineers’ Workshops are available here.

20-21 September, 2021, 8:30am – 4:30pm Coding your own Arduino Switch (Years 5-9) Experience the fun and exciting world of coding & robotics using the Arduino electronics platform where kids get to build their own hand-held gaming console and code it with awesome retro computer games.
22-23 September, 2021, 8:30am – 4:30pm Coding your own MiniTendo (Years 2-7) With Junior Engineers’ MiniTendo camp, you get to design and code your own games and upload them to your own handheld gaming device. From Space Invaders and Pac Man through to adventure games and RPGs, you will become a junior game developer in no time.
27-28 September, 2021, 8:30am – 4:30pm Jnr Minecraft Coders (Years 2-6) Jnr Minecraft Coders teaches younger kids how to code and expand the game they already know and love using drag and drop coding. Learn how to teleport across large bodies of water, mine bread from deposits, create sandstorms, earthquakes, make it rain pigs and chickens, create zombies and more!
29 September-1 October, 2021, 8:30am – 4:30pm Intro to Coding with Gamification (Years 2-6) This program teaches the foundations in drag-and-drop coding and how it’s applied to game development. The main goal of the course is to ensure students understand the fundamentals of coding through creating simple video games and developing basic animations and cartoons.