Global Innovators Entrepreneurial Program

Last Thursday, 48 students and 5 teachers from four different schools came to Coomera Rivers to engage in an entrepreneurial program that will span two terms.

Mrs Pinnington lead the students and teachers through fun learning tasks to:

• Get to know your team members
• Mapping (visually representing) our Global Community
• Defining a problem with a problem statement and 'How Might We?' questions
• Ideating
• Empathising (customer value proposition)

Students and teachers will now head back to their schools to build prototypes of their design solutions, create their marketing materials and a trade display and prepare their shark-tank style pitch.

We will welcome them back to Coomera Rivers in Week 5 next term for the Trade Show & Pitch Event. Year 6 Coomera Rivers students who participated last week, will now become mentors when our own students in Years 5 and 6 complete the program next term.

The Innovation Hub

We have an exciting new learning space in our school. The Innovation Hub is located in the iCentre and opened its doors this week for some guided class sessions with Mrs Pinnington.

Housing a variety of innovative and creative tasks for all year levels, the Innovation Hub encourages teachers to learn alongside their students. Many ideas were shared this week for how the use of these new digital skills could be applied in the classroom to further leverage technology for accelerating learning.

Here's an example of the type of activity students have enjoyed over the last week. Have you ever wondered what some people are thinking? Using Green Screen Technology, students can reveal what new knowledge they've learned. This activity is called: One Shot Green Screen

It wasn't just students learning in the Innovation Hub this week though. Teachers who were able to book a time to bring their class were also spotted engaging in some professional learning as they explored some new tech tools they haven't used before.  Teachers demonstrating life-long learning and learning alongside students is a beautiful sight to see.

Ocean Stars impress Prep learners

Our Prep students very much enjoyed a visit from Ocean Stars this week, to consolidate their learning of 'Under the sea'.  They explored different sea creatures, including sea stars, sea urchins and sea cucumbers as well as shells, shark eggs and dental skeletons. They were also able to touch some of the sea creatures and learned about their important roles in our oceans.

Students loved being able to get up close to some ocean friends

STEM Pentathlon

Our team of six boys and girls from Year 5 competed at the STEM Pentathlon at Pimpama State Secondary College this week.

They started the morning with their first challenge to make a toilet. The design requirements were that the toilet had to be:  

• Constructed with cardboard
• Sturdy and hold a minimum weight of 50kg
• Waterproof

Our team design included a triangular-based bowl and a diamond shaped opening.  Our design, while comfortably meeting the strength requirements, struggled to maintain its waterproofing.  And that could be a problem for a toilet.  

Their second challenge was to make a boat that could hold the weight and size of at least 25 marbles without sinking.  It also had to be waterproof and stable in wavy waters.

While our teams didn't win the competition, they certainly had an absolute blast and represented the values and standards of our school incredibly well.  

Chess results impress

Congratulations to the two teams who represented our school chess program this week.  We played against many of the state and independent schools in the northern Gold Coast and once again, acquitted ourselves very admirably.  Thank you also to Mrs Hardwick for leading the team at the event.