STEM at Alexander First School 

Global societies are becoming increasingly advanced, and technology is more embedded in our daily lives than ever before. STEM has accelerated advancement in some of the world’s most critical industries, such as logistics, manufacturing, healthcare, farming, and beyond. Science has been at the forefront of the global health crisis and has paved the way for the accelerated propulsion of vaccinations and treatments for COVID-19.

Alexander First School’s STEM curriculum has been designed to address the following:

STEM skills to cultivate empathy

The cognitive skills needed to create technical solutions for real-world problems require the capacity to work with people, understand issues from another perspective, and gather requirements to craft technical solutions.

Alexander First School’s STEM curriculum is based on hands-on tasks and challenges providing real-world context and urgency to learning and enables pupil to bring together knowledge from science, maths and design & technology.

Our projects are inspired by the United Nations Goals for Sustainable Development and are structured around four key themes:

• Water
• Energy
• Food
• Exploration and discovery

Each unit is structured to encourage pupils to:

• Ask questions to understand the precise nature of the challenge presented
• Plan how to conduct investigations to build knowledge and check assumptions
• Design solutions, iterate and evaluate their effectiveness.

The context for each challenge is set through videos, image galleries and fact-files, while task-sheets guide pupils through the hands-on activities.

STEM skills to change the world

STEM education is about preparing for what’s next, presenting relevant problems the next generation will have to solve. With the enquiry process at the heart of STEM Connect, each unit is structured to encourage pupils to:

• Ask questions to understand the precise nature of the challenge presented
• Plan how to conduct investigations to build knowledge and check assumptions
• Design solutions, iterate and evaluate their effectiveness

Our STEM curriculum uses relatable scenarios that bring out pupils’ creativity while guiding them to develop and apply knowledge and skills to important real-world challenges. Challenges also shed light on different STEM careers, helping pupils identify future professions.

Investing in the local and wider community

Our STEM curriculum aims to take pupils beyond the classroom walls. Projects have been designed to both educate pupils about the challenges that face in society today and tomorrow, as well as show pupils how they can make an impact in addressing these challenges themselves – even from a young age! Pupil voice is of the greatest importance and we aim to provide a consistent and effective platform through this approach.