Inspiring creativity, exploring the truth, excellent STEAM courses, embracing the future with your children

STEAM education is different from the traditional teaching model. It emphasizes "activity teaching" and "thematic teaching" to enhance students' learning motivation and fun, and provide children with opportunities to practice what they have learned. Precious Blood Primary School (Wah Fu Estate) Upholds the "student-centered" spirit of educating people, keeps up with teaching trends, plans excellent and comprehensive STEAM courses and activities, builds children's science and technology foundation, equips them for the future, and realizes the lofty educational vision of "inspiring exploration and embracing the future".

The campus is fully equipped to deepen the effectiveness of innovation and technology education

In order to cooperate with the development of information technology and promote electronic teaching, the school is committed to optimizing technological equipment and teaching supporting facilities. For example, with funding from the Quality Education Fund, the school has established a "distance classroom" that allows students to connect with people outside the school through online video technology, increasing their opportunities to contact the community and learning to communicate with people of different nationalities around the world. In recent years, the school has continuously upgraded its information technology equipment, and interactive electronic whiteboards are installed in school classrooms and special rooms to promote classroom interaction and communication and improve teaching effectiveness. "In order to complement the existing teaching materials and teaching aids and add diversified learning elements, the school has also renovated the computer room in recent years, built a new 'STEM Room', and purchased a variety of advanced equipment, such as programming drones, micro:bit, Ozobot, Osmo, Matatalab, etc. At the same time, students are encouraged to participate in off-campus competitions to cultivate their achievements and development in innovation and technology." Principal Zou Guifang said with a smile.

Special school-based courses to build common abilities

The school has always attached great importance to the development of STEAM curriculum. Through cross-disciplinary collaboration, concepts such as science and technology can be combined with different disciplines to achieve comprehensive integration, allowing students to develop common abilities such as creativity, problem-solving and inquiry. Principal Zou pointed out that in order to cooperate with the implementation of the new curriculum, the mathematics department has specially introduced STEAM experiential learning based on "mathematical inquiry"; the information technology department of the upper primary school has also added the "Cool Think@JC" programming course to inspire children's digital creativity in daily life through "computational thinking education", allowing every student to use their hands and brain to learn happily. In addition, the general knowledge subject not only attaches great importance to scientific inquiry and adds "hands-on" elements, but also introduces the new "GIGO Chigao Course", which perfectly integrates the STEAM concept into building block game learning and practices "toy-based teaching materials and toy-based teaching materials", allowing students to deepen their logical thinking and creativity through ever-changing combinations of building blocks, while also enhancing children's cognitive ability of three-dimensional space and developing the coordination of small muscles in their hands.

"STEAM Day" combines music to create beautiful music

STEAM education is not limited to one class or activity. Therefore, the school strengthens the STEAM content in mathematics, general knowledge and information technology subjects, increases the proportion of "hands-on" in the classroom, and closely links STEAM learning to students' campus life. Curriculum coordinator Director Chung Yuanyin took the "STEAM Day" as an example. In addition to different scientific inquiry themes, the teaching team also designed a "music laboratory" rich in music learning elements to deepen the diversity of artistic learning and closely integrate technology and humanities. Students were taught to use "Sound Maker" to create different music chapters and experience the joy of composing. Afterwards, the teacher would guide students to use "QR Code" technology to print their works into graphic codes, so that they could relive their masterpieces with their family and friends.

"Theme Learning Day" Hands-on Learning to Be an Engineer

In recent years, schools have transitioned from STEM education to STEAM education, which has greatly expanded the scope and content of innovation and technology learning. It has also allowed children with different expertise and personalities to feel the inclusiveness of technology learning. Innovation and technology learning combined with humanities and arts has also achieved children's aesthetic and creative development, achieving a whole-person education. STEAM elements have also been integrated into different learning activities. For example, this year's activity titled "My Childhood Dream Paradise" allows students to experience the work of different types of work in the society and plan their careers early. There are also innovation and technology learning elements. Children can not only make carton robots through workshops, but also learn simple carpentry to make wooden pots for their favorite plants. They not only learn traditional Chinese woodworking techniques, but also add artistic elements to create beautiful patterns for potted plants, giving them a unique experience of engineering art.

“Even during the school’s open days or after-examination activities, teachers seize the opportunity to provide more STEAM Space and time for learning. For example, in last year's open day, teachers and students worked together to create a "metaverse", using campus photos and "virtual reality" technology to introduce campus scenery and information to parents and students at the school. In the post-test activities, the teaching team also designed learning themes suitable for different students' development, such as third-grade students learning about drones, and fourth-grade students learning about drones. Students in grade five will learn about artificial intelligence and Internet of Things technology. Teachers and students will also seize the opportunity to conduct interesting scientific experiments and creations. For example, grade four students will design a tablet holder with the help of the teacher, combining concepts and knowledge of mathematics and visual arts to develop their inquiry and problem-solving skills, which can also be used to summarize the students’ learning results for the year.