STEAM Week 2024

Here is a summary of all the fantastic activities that took place throughout the school.

 

Pre-prep activities

 

Microsoft 

On Monday we were very lucky to have a visit from Mrs Mason, Emily’s mummy, and her colleague Lulia who work for Microsoft. They delivered an interesting talk about Artificial Intelligence and what they do at Microsoft. They shared a great analogy that AI should be treated like your ‘copilot’, while the human is still in charge and makes overall decisions as the ‘pilot’. We learnt some interesting facts when playing ‘Truth or Myth’ with exciting prizes for all. We saw how Microsoft CoPilot can be used to design personalised bedroom designs, new toys and Lego models. We are incredibly grateful to them for coming in to talk to us. 

 

Maths Trail 

In conjunction with STEAM Week's focus on time this year, children in Year 6 designed and ran time-related maths activities with groups of children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. The challenges included getting into age order, saying the days of the week really fast (forwards and backwards!), manipulating clock faces to show different times, and guessing how long 30 seconds is.  

 

Reception 

Reception were very busy taking part in various STEAM week activities! They designed and built some junk model Robots in teams of 4. Working together to design them, they had to decide what materials to use and then build them. The children visited a Robotics workshop with Harrison’s Grandpa where he showed us working, battery-operated robots built by some Year 4’s in robotics club. They loved watching them move around a track and were keeping an eye out for them bumping into each other! They also had a lovely lesson on Time, that was planned and delivered by the Year 6 children. They have thoroughly enjoyed STEAM week! 

 

Year 1  

What a fun week Year 1 have had taking part in STEAM week. They started the week with a visit from Mrs Mason who works at Microsoft. She explained how AI is all around us before using it to design a bedroom and a toy based on the children’s prompts. In groups, we collaboratively made junk model rockets which were flown by robots. We hope Mr Williams can use AI to turn them into real-life rocket images. We loved visiting Mr Barr, who showed us some amazing robots that follow a track. We all thought it was very silly that the little robot kept almost crashing into the big robot, which we have aptly named, Robotic! A big thank you to Year 6 and Mr Dwinell who created some fun Maths activities which tested our knowledge of time. Our favourite activity was trying to count to 30 at the same speed as a stopwatch! What a busy week! 

 

Year 2  

Year 2 have had such an exciting STEAM week and have thoroughly enjoyed taking part in all the various activities. They kicked the week off with an AI session delivered by Emily Harant's mummy who works for Microsoft. They found it very ‘cool’ and mesmerising when she brought their room ideas to life! The year 6’s and Mr Dwinell orgainsed and led some ‘time’ related Maths activities outside. The children loved putting themselves into age order and telling the time on the magic clock! We were all very impressed by NAO the robot who came from Headington and did some tai-chi for us too! Everybody cooed over the companion cat and dinosaur, who both showed real personality! The children used their junk modelling to create eye-catching sea life aquariums and we can wait for Mr Williams to bring them to life with AI! What a wonderfully busy STEAM week we have all had!  

 

Prep activities 

 

Generating AI images in Year 5 and 6  

Year 5 and 6 were lucky enough to have Mr Williams come and do a session on generative AI with them this week. The children wrote a short description in pairs of anything they liked: a setting, a scenario, a character – anything at all! They then fed their descriptions into the Chat GPT image generator and their images appeared. After seeing the images produced, the children then had the opportunity to alter their image by asking Chat GPT to change various aspects. We had some very weird and wonderful images produced by the software, leading to much hilarity! 

 

Celebrating British Science Week

In Science lessons, children in the Prep school have been celebrating British Science Week by looking at different aspects of time: 

• Year 4 enjoyed using augmented reality to learn about habitats and how different animals have adapted over time to survive.  
• Year 5 delved a little into space-time and the theory of relativity before finding out how their ages would be different if they lived on other planets in our solar system.  
• Year 6 discovered that our brains can perceive time differently depending on what we are doing, and they had lots of fun testing their own time perception with different challenges. 

 

Aeronautical Engineering 

Year 6 enjoyed a talk from Mr Pearson about his career in aeronautical engineering. They were interested to learn about the different career options they could pursue in aerospace and how those jobs impact lots of technologies we use every day. They each took away a model airplane from the talk and had fun testing these to see who could fly the furthest! 

 

Animation Nation 

Year 5 had a fantastic time on Wednesday morning creating their own animations with ‘Animation Nation’. They used plasticine to create some wonderful characters and then took photos at 12 frames a second to create their own short films. We learnt that a day of filming for ‘Chicken Run’ creates about 8 seconds of footage – we can now see why! I hope to be able to share the children’s films with you soon. 

A huge thank you to all the staff and parents who helped to make it a truly fun and entertaining STEAM week for us all. 

 

Naomi the Robot 

We were incredibly lucky to have a visit from Headington Rye School from Mr Howe, Head of Computer Science, Evie who used to be at Rupert House and is now in Year 8 and Naomi the Robot, as well as a multitude of other exciting robots. Naomi chatted to us and did some Tai Chi. She also was able to hold eye contact and blink. Cleo the Dinosaur was particularly popular, with her own little personality and reactions to how she was treated. Year 6 were lucky to have a chance to independently code Naomi using Choreographe; fearlessly experimenting with the unknown. We’d like to express a huge thank you to Headington Rye School for the opportunity to meet their robots and learn a little bit more about them.  

 

AI in Art

Mrs Forbes ran a fun workshop with Year 4 on Thursday, to explore the topic of AI in Art. The children worked in a practical way, then discussed how an artist puts feelings in their work and that this is unique.  

 

May Fair games 

Ms Dallah gave up a day of her time to support Year 6 with designing and making their May Fair games. She began by explaining the design process she (as an architect), and other designers utilise. The children then used the steps for their practical work. They learnt the importance of asking questions and having fun! 

 

BBC and AI

Mrs Cottle gave a wonderful presentation to Year 4 about her work at the BBC with AI. The children discussed what they already knew about AI (quite a lot, it turned out!) and then listened to Mrs Cottle talk about some real-life applications for AI at the BBC. We finished with a quiz, where children voted on whether images of celebrities were real or AI-generated. The children had interesting questions about the exciting and potentially concerning aspects of AI. 

 

 

Here is a selection of our favourite photos from across the week: