5/6 STEM Sprint Challenge
On Tuesday 22nd August, a group of our 5/6 students were fortunate to attend a STEM Sprint Challenge event held at the Melbourne Museum. In the past, these have been hosted by Scienceworks, however organisers this year opted for the Carlton location.
It was a fun and informative day, with students taking part in gallery tours and water exploration with Dr Richard Marchant, who is the senior curator of aquatic invertebrates at the museum. He demonstrated how samples are taken of ponds and rivers to determine the creatures that live there and what food sources are available for other river animals such as platypus.
Students listened to talks on biodiversity and food chains, learning that all food chains begin with vegetation. This was important as they needed to use this information when putting together ideas on how we could design an environment to encourage biodiversity in our city.
After sharing ideas, our groups designed models using craft materials to show what they would like a biodiverse rich environment to look like, and the sort of animals they hoped to encourage to the area, such as koalas, native birds and enchidnas.