ISPP Students Participate in Kid City STEM Competition

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Kid City is holding a STEM Competition this week and invited schools from Phnom Penh to Participate. ISPP was able to send two teams of 5 students: one from Elementary, and one from Secondary. Students had to be 12 years old or younger to participate.

So what is STEM? STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. In the past decade there have been many initiatives to boost STEM in education, in large part to increase the availability of skilled workers for rapidly growing STEM fields, and to give our children the skills they will need to meet the challenges of the future. Particular areas of focus are teaching STEM subjects in an integrated manner rather than separately, and reaching out to younger students, girls, and minorities. Hour of Code, Khan Academy, Scratch, and Codecademy are some examples of projects that help make STEM accessible to students and teachers.

Our teams made outstanding efforts and it was inspiring to watch them share ideas and collaborate to solve problems.

At Secondary, we started by having a few practices with the fun activities that Kid City provided as warm ups. We highly recommend that you try these at home :)

Moving objects using only paper clips:


Making helicopters out of paper: students modified shape and weight distribution in the base and propellers, and compared results. We wondered how these would look if they were colored: they might make good movie props... :)



And building a tower with spaghetti and gummi candy:


Then we went to Kid City for the real thing! The event was beautifully organized and it was an extremely positive atmosphere.

First students were put on mixed school teams, and used string and an elastic band to collaboratively reorganize cups.

Then they worked in their school teams and made bridges out of four sheets of paper and 10cm of tape and tested how many boxes of paperclips they could balance. We managed 17!

Finally, they made bridges out of supplies they bought with Kid City money. There were popsicle sticks, tape, bottle caps, elastics, and much more. Our students chose popsicle sticks, tape, a string, and an elastic. Their bridge was successful and able to suspend 4.6 kilograms of sand. They even came in under budget :)

Finally, we got together with all the other participants for a photo, and got a goody bag!

Here are some photos of our Elementary stars at work:




It was great to work with fellow teacher leaders Camille Dolmont (Secondary Science and Mathematics) and Bridget Brian (Grade 4/5 teacher) to support these students for the event. We were impressed with both teams for their outstanding collaboration, creativity, and ingenuity. It was a great event and we are thankful to Kid City and Laura Boon, Head of Kid City Science, for organizing. 






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