• Language

Westover Green Community School and Autism Centre

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths)

Westover Green are currently involved in the "2019 North Somerset STEM Science Challenge" which culminates in a grand final to be held in Bristol on 28th March 2019. This forms part of a national project which this year focuses on "Pollution in the Ocean".

The children were given a challenge brief "To design and build a flying bird that can catch fish (and not the pollution in the ocean!)."

The children had to make a sea bird. The bird would need to fly (down a wire) towards the ocean. In the ocean would be lots of plastic as well as lots of magnetic fish. The bird has to pick up as many fish as it can.

Each bird was judged on it's design (best looking sea bird), it's accuracy (can the bird pick up the fish using a magnet?) and score (number of fish picked up).

The children were divided into teams of KS1 and KS2. Each group chose a sea bird that they would like to find more information about.

Activity 1: To research an endangered sea bird using the internet.

Activity 2: To design their chosen seabird using the criteria and research found.

Activity 3: To create their seabirds. This all got very competitive! Lots of thought went into each seabird from every group. The children showed great team work and worked tremendously hard to make their bird as closely as they could to their design.

After lots of hard work and determination these were the finished sea birds!

FS and Key Stage 1:

Key Stage 2:

Activity 4: Birds made, the children then flew them into the sea to collect the fish. It all got a bit exciting!

One KS1 and KS2 team have been chosen to go to the final in Bristol based upon the criteria above.

Next stop for these 2 groups will be Somerset final in Bristol on 28th March! We will be competing against other schools so watch this space...

The final day...

The children were an absolute pleasure to take. They all showed outstanding behaviour and were tremendous role models representing our school. They were all great team players and should be proud of all their achievements.

Key Stage 1 did brilliantly and managed to pick up 9 fish. Key Stage 2 came third overall after their sea bird collected 13 fish.

Both teams should be very proud of themselves. It was a great day and we feel very lucky to be part of this National project. We all received a plaque which we have proudly displayed with all our sea birds from the beginning of our challenge together with our plans for everyone to see.

Horfield Primary School also made a song called "Song of the Sea" which can be found on You tube. Westover Green, along with all the other schools in the challenge will be singing this song on 8th June to mark "World Oceans Day".