Science excites at Kingston Primary School

A renewed push for students to become more involved in science, engineering, technology and maths subjects has reached Kingston Primary School, with a Scitech program run in partnership with Alcoa. The Alcoa Maths Enrichment Program delivered a series of maths-related murder mystery events at schools across the State and the fun and drama came to Kingston on Thursday. The program required students and parents to complete a series of maths problems, with each answer unveiling a clue to help reveal the culprit. Scitech and Alcoa have been working with teachers at the school, running professional development sessions to help teachers plan classes for the STEM subjects using real-life situations and problems. Scitech professional learning consultant Shyam Drury said maths was the foundation for all STEM subjects so it was important for primary school students to have a good grasp of the practical applications of the subject. “We really wanted to get better outcomes for students in mathematics because it is the key to all STEM fields which are going to be important in the future,” he said. “We do projects, problem-solving in class and we do parent and family engagement like this with fun ways of doing maths to target all those areas of improving students’ and parents’ attitudes towards maths, as well as building the capacity of teachers to deliver really powerful lessons that get better outcomes for thestudents.” Year 3 and 4 teacher Gina Piggott said she enjoyed delivering the program. “In three classes in our school we are running enrichment programs for the rest of the term which involve real life maths and maths inquiries,” she said. “In our class we are doing an inquiry around organising a fundraiser and all of the maths around working out ingredients and profit and loss. It is a really engaging way to teach maths,” she said.