On April 2, 2022, Yuvabe team along with Deepanam school organised a STEAM Fest, to present student projects that were created as part of Deepanam’s new STEAM curriculum. STEAM, an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths, is a modified version of the more famous STEM education initiative, that focuses on promoting a love for science related subjects, in schools around the world.
Yuvabe’s Anupama Balaji, who is leading the curriculum at Deepanam, along with Sundar, Jeeva, Karthick, Kalai and Mariya (who also volunteer as teachers at the school) organised the festival. The rest of Yuvabe team supported the festival by making posters, event maps, spreading the word, and helping running the various stalls.
The STEAM curriculum is inspired by the Project Based Learning approach, and was introduced to the school about a year ago. While most classes have a Science, Engineering or Maths component, there is also multimedia exploration, storytelling and other more artistic projects. The core idea behind the curriculum is to enable educational empowerment, cultivate a growth mindset while also developing a variety of soft skills along the way, like collaboration, communication.
It was a joy to see all the students proudly show off their work to all the other kids, parents, and everyone else in the community who came to attend, participate, and support the school.
The students, aged 8-14 years old, presented cardboard mazes, ice-cream stick hydraulic structures, straw roller coasters, LED and breadboard circuits, and many more projects that they built over the course of the year.
The computer games that were programed by the students of 7th – 8th grades, turned out to be a big hit and even the parents showed interest in learning programming the same way!
With each new person visiting their table, the presenting kids communicated better and with more confidence about the project and their learnings; a skill that is just as important as the concepts themselves.
Through the medium of this festival we also wanted children to come together and have a fun day of creating and tinkering. There were spaces where children spent time building structures using a variety of materials, from magnetic tiles, to straws, paper cups and rubber tubes.
Constant education and learning is one of the core foundational ideas of Auroville. The STEAM Fest gave our team, Deepanam school and the parents a lot of encouragement and positive feedback about the way we are bringing the joy of learning to our children.
We hope to be able to bring the program to more schools in the community and keep the spark of curiosity and creativity alive in our children, for years to come.
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