STEM4all

For this year’s STEM Discovery Week the headmaster of Ano Syros Primary School Mr Nektarios Farassopoulos along with the students of the Fourth Grade decided to organize a peer learning activity about day and night for the students of the Special Primary School of Hermoupolis.

Firstly, all the pupils, (10 boys and 6 girls) studied a SCIENTIX resource (http://bit.ly/2Y1Xtb3) related to our topic. Then they visited the Special Primary School of Hermoupolis where students with disabilities attend lessons. For one day the pupils became teachers and tried to explain to the pupils of the Special Primary School how the day becomes night and vice versa using a SCIENTIX resource.

1. At the Special Primary School of Hermoupolis
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Diffraction and interference around us

For years and years this has been my least favorite part of school’s curriculum. Too much messy drawing on the board, too much mathematical formulas, and from student’s point of view this was just empty talk. I naturally tried and tried to explain this to my students as best as I could, but even with experiments, that I could demonstrate during the class, I’ve felt that my students been missing the point. They would just try to memorise whole thing without any critical thinking, and let’s face it, what kind of a teacher would I be to let that happen? Most of my colleagues agreed that this is not an easy part of curriculum which it’s hard to be understood even by older students at faculties, and that it is meant only for top of class.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that this was unnecessary part of school’s curriculum. This is fundamental part of physics. This was one of the first mistakes made by Newton. And shockingly this is where quantum mechanics starts (thank you Feynman). So I really needed to help my students learn more about this, but how?

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