Science and Technology week is a week full of activities that our Science, Mathematics and ICT teachers plan and prepare together with an interdisciplinary approach. It is an organization where we aim to bring together many activities related to science and technology with our students, teachers and parents at different times throughout the week. During the planning and preparation process, all of our students who are interested in STEM areas support the organization of the week by taking responsibility from the beginning to the end of this process. Students who want to take responsibility and student expectations of the week are determined via a mini questionnaire. While planning different activities that will include all members of the school, it is aimed that other disciplines also include concepts and topics related to science and technology throughout the week with an interdisciplinary approach. Due to pandemic this year, we held the science and technology week online.
On Monday, we started the week with an opening ceremony in the morning chat as a whole grade. We opened the week with a video of fun chemistry experiments performed by science teachers at school that cannot be conducted at home, a video on the development of technology and fun Mathematics questions.
In the morning chats throughout the week; we started each new day with morning talks on different topics related to science and technology such as video footage, “Super Moon” presentation, origami, cryptology, artificial intelligence, robotics, home-made student experiments in and videos in which we included our parents.
It was also an important goal to bring our students together with professionals from STEM fields throughout the week. We had the following conversations with our guests who are experts in their fields.
• Language of Science: Mathematics
• Our Health, Vaccines and Medicines
• Mathematics in Everyday Life
• Science Literacy
• Engineering Grand Challenges for 21st Century
Another activity of the week was student project presentations. Our students shared the products of the projects carried out in Science, Mathematics and ICT courses throughout the year and the project study we carried out with our volunteer students completed during after school sessions. Student presentations on 25 different topics were planned in 3 different sessions. All our students at grade 5, 6 and 7 were asked to choose the presentations they would like to attend depending on their interests. Students shared with us what they learned during the presentations they attended and gave their feedback to their friends via the MS forms link. Each student watched 3 different peer presentations and had the opportunity to obtain information on the subject they chose and to give feedback to his / her friend. This sharing, which was carried out online for the first time, took its place among the most important events of the week as both an enjoyable and an instructive activity.
Within the scope of this week, studies were carried out in our lessons in accordance with the meaning and importance of the week. Each student designed their own logo in the art class to use as a background during the science and technology week. In ICT courses, the lives of scientists in history, from past to the present, were videotaped. Different home experiments were carried out in science classes. Escape games were played in the math class. Biography of Turkish Astrophysicist Dilhan Eryurt was examined while the subject of biography was covered in the Turkish lesson.
At the end of this enjoyable week, we received student feedback with the evaluation questionnaire we applied to our students. This feedback, which will guide us in planning the science and technology week next year, is very valuable. We ended our week by sharing the certificates of the students who took responsibility during the planning and execution of the week. Although we hope to do it face to face next year, we shared the pride and joy of celebrating our week online as well.
All visuals belong to the Author – Attribution CC-BY