STEAM Week at Berkhamsted Prep

During STEAM (science, tech, engineering, art, maths) Week, pupils at Berkhamsted Independent Prep School in Hertfordshire immersed themselves in exciting lessons that fostered their curiosity and helped them better understand the world around them.

To kick off the week of STEAM activities, Mr McNicholl led a robot assembly for Year 3. The children were introduced to JD, a robot kindly donated to Berkhamsted by EZ-Robotics. JD sang Happy Birthday, walked up and down, and performed a headstand, all thanks to voice commands. Pupils left the session with a better understanding of programming and the potential of future technology.

Years 3-6 each enjoyed Science Professor Workshops across the week. This interactive session taught basic scientific principles through fun and interactive STEM experiments and challenges. Teachers were invited to hold a balloon to a candle flame and after the balloon exploded loudly in front of Ms Galler’s face, pupils and staff erupted into a roar of laughter! But this experiment wasn’t just a way to prank teachers, it taught them an important scientific principle: higher temperatures cause helium to expand.

Pupils then got into teams to discuss how they would empty water from a bottle in the quickest time. The winning team used the innovative technique of creating a tornado effect by swirling the water and emptying the bottle in just five seconds!

Year 6 enjoyed a particularly immersive STEAM workshop as they watched Ms Holland dissect a lamb’s heart. Pupils saw the left and right ventricle, the pulmonary vein, and the vena cava, boosting their understanding of the heart and how this organ keep us alive. At the end of the session, pupils could choose to grab a glove and touch the heart themselves under supervision.

The interdisciplinary, immersive approach to learning during STEAM week enabled pupils to collaborate and think critically and creatively, all while learning the value of these important subjects and how they work in tandem.