STEM

Intent

At St. Anthony’s, our intent for our Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) education is to ensure that the ethos of STEM is incorporated across the curriculum and wider life of the school, especially through Maths, Science, Design Technology and Computing lessons. Our STEM ethos embeds the values of independence, exploration, creativity, challenge and resilience into the children as they move through the school. We will ensure that the children are given ample opportunities to develop these skills through a variety of activities. Also, through STEM activities we will allow the children opportunities to develop their communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity skills. Each STEM project and task will be challenging to push the children in their learning and will be allocated enough time to allow children to develop the important skills of revisiting and improving their outcomes. Throughout their time at St. Anthony’s children will be given many opportunities to meet and interact with a range of STEM ambassadors from various fields of study, to inspire and broaden each child’s knowledge of possible future paths. We will help the children to become creative and innovative young people who are ready to meet the demands of the future.

Implementation

STEM activities will be incorporated throughout other timetabled lessons. In Key Stage 1 and EYFS, a constant STEM area is set up for the children to access through Continuous Provision. Short engineering-specific activities are set to children in Key Stage 2 at the beginning of Science lessons. Each year, one in depth STEM project will be undertaken by each year group. This will enable children to follow the Engineering Design Process and develop some of the key STEM skills further. Teachers will ensure the projects are meaningful, adapted so all children can access the learning and have an end goal which will inspire all children. Through in-house training, all teaching staff will be kept up to date with new information and activities. CPD will always be offered to those staff who are non-specialist and would like to progress their own learning. A yearly assessment against our own assessment criteria will be carried out by all teachers.

Impact

Through our STEM education, we hope for our children to develop a good understanding of the STEM values, ideals, skills and the Engineering Design Process. The STEM ethos will be incorporated not only into STEM sessions but across the curriculum and throughout the school. We hope that all children will be able to, independently and as part of a team, create and engineer a product which meets a specific design criteria. When our children complete their time at St. Anthony’s, they will be ready to continue their STEM Education at the next level. They will have the knowledge and skills to continue their paths in discovering STEM careers, with our aim being that more children will choose to follow the path towards a STEM career.