STEM

Our STEM vision

Our STEM vision is to teach all our students the foundational principles of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Whether they go on to choose Science, Art or Commercial majors, having a fundamental knowledge of how the world works, how to think critically, and how to make rational decisions, will only help them be more successful in whatever field they choose.

Our STEM Goals

Our goal is to include STEM classes and learning into our core timetable, so that every class and every student will have at least 1 to 2 STEM classes in Science, Computer Science and Mathematics per week. Because these classes start with the building blocks, they will help students understand and do better in all their subjects. The students will also learn how to think through problems, gain confidence in themselves, and rely on their own ability to make the right decisions.

The STEM courses are structured such that in each lesson, students are presented with a graphic and an explanation of the lesson, then an example is given, and then students are invited to start the lesson. Each lesson poses a series of questions with increasing difficulty with a graphic, an explanation of the problem and multiple choices to choose the answer from. There is immediate feedback on whether the chosen answer is correct or incorrect and an explanation is given to understand the problem. Now students can read the explanation before they answer the question but then they wont get points for answering the question because they would have already ‘seen the answer’. The idea is to make students think through each problem and even take an educated guess to test their understanding.

In the beginning, the students found it difficult because this is the first time they are learning this way, and they had a lot of questions. But once they understood, you should have seen the excitement on their faces. From Michael, to Ali-ameen, to Mmesoma, when they got the answer the happiness on their faces plus a loud YES! all at once. All our children had fun learning and were so eager to continue the lesson, they were disappointed when we had to stop them 2 hours later. They cannot wait for the next class next week.

Of course being our first time too, there were some technical issues, Our server rebooted a couple of times because having 27 systems downloading high graphics and interactive learning programs proved too much for it. The task manager was at 100%. So now we have to get a higher grade server and we are already thinking of how we can have another ICT lab so we can run 2 STEM classes at the same time.