Students Learn About Smart Home Electronics
Fifty students participate in STEM activity with Chief Executives
Fifty Year 9 students from The Avon Valley School and Performing Arts College recently completed an engaging
STEM day which focused on the electronic systems used in smart houses.
The activities delivered by The Smallpiece Trust, and funded by The UK Electronic Skills Foundation, aimed to
engage students and encourage them to consider training, and careers, in Science, Technology, Engineering
and Maths. The event was attended by Chief Executives Stewart Edmondson from the UKESF and Dr Kevin
Stenson from the Smallpeice Trust, who are celebrating their 50th year throughout 2016.
As part of the day’s activities, students had to design and create a water filtration system for a smart building.
The scale models made by the students simulated collected rainwater being pumped and delivered to various
parts of a building.
Stewart Edmondson, CEO for The UK Electronics Skills Foundation said “It was great to see so many young
people engaged in a design project that uses electronics. I was really impressed with the innovative solutions
the students used when problem solving.”
As a result of this engineering challenge, five of our students have won places onto the 50 th Anniversary’s
Engineering Experience residential course at Warwick University 19-21 July 2016. They are Cian Montgomery,
Joshua Selby, Theresa Asante, Theodora Enache and Chloe Hunt. Congratulations to these students!
Upcoming Residential for Year 9 students
We are aiming to enthuse budding environmental scientists to learn the science of monitoring the environment
around them. The science department is planning to take up to 60 Year 9 GCSE students to the field study
council residential centre at Bets-y-Coed , Snowdonia National Park to learn survey methods to survey river
and terrestrial habitats, to analyse water and air quality, and to use biological indicator species to identify
pollutants. This is an extremely oversubscribed residential in a beautiful National Park, providing a unique
experience for our GCSE students to have first hand experience on required GCSE practical skills.
Mr Goldthorp says " there is no substitute for first hand field study experience. For me it is the best part of
science, learning to apply it to study and protect our natural environments. The field studies course I did in
secondary school enthused me to take an ecology degree and to go on to monitoring sea turtle nesting activity
for 3 years for WWF before I went into teaching. This really is an amazing opportunity." Watch this space for
more details.
Students can now access a new science resource that has revision materials, quizzes, powerpoint
presentations and other interactive tools. Doddle contains thousands of fascinating, thought-provoking and
formative resources to help students learn and progress in biology, chemistry and physics. Students have
been trialling out using Doddle this term at home and within lessons and feedback has been really positive as
an effect revision tool.