STEM week 2025 - Day 4

Our final afternoon of activities saw…

Twinkles using technology to navigate the story of Jack and the Beanstalk; they had to think carefully about which direction they wanted to go and if it didn’t end up where they wanted it to, they had to problem solve and change their code.

Class 1 turned their hands to designing an outfit for Jack. They used their science knowledge of materials to think about which had the best properties to support what Jack needed to do. They then put the materials to the test.

Class 2 became masters in sorting. They first sorted the beans by hand, and used their maths skills to record their findings in tables, tally charts and bar charts. They then analyzed the data and were able to identify which bean was the most common, and which was the least common, in every mixture. They then thought about why this might be. They then became engineers again and created filtering systems to separate the beans. They soon realised that working as a team really supported this activity.

Class 3 took on the challenge of getting Jack down safely, but quickly, from the beanstalk. They used their science knowledge of forces to think about the properties of materials and how that would affect the speed of their model. There was also testing and remodelling, as well as a lot of team work.

Finally, we came together as a whole school for one last challenge. The children were split into mixed groups across the whole school and were given a bag of resources. Their challenge was to build the tallest or strongest beanstalk in 10 minutes. Before they started we discussed how we might approach this challenge, thinking about what they had learnt from the week. The children shared that first they should look at what they had got to use, then they should share ideas (making sure that everyone got a chance to speak). We were really impressed with how well the groups worked together and the resilience they showed in achieving their goal. At the final whistle we did have a clear winner with the tallest beanstalk measuring 1m 32cm.  We also had a number of beanstalk structures that were strong enough to hold Jack at the top. All very impressive! The children then reflected on the week, thinking back to the theme of ‘Change and Adapt’ and how they had done this throughout the week, sharing what they had learned and what they had enjoyed.