Island Academy – Arts and STEM in their hearts

The Island Academy welcomed its fourth cohort of students who spent the day participating in STEM and Performance Arts (Drama) classes on Friday 17 January. Students from Beacon Hill School, Glenealy School and Peak School had the opportunity to extend their learning and challenge their creative thinking skills in the drama studio and STEM workshop at Island School, Tai Wai campus.

The Arts Academy is designed for students to benefit from Creative Arts learning and the Island Academy STEM is designed for students to benefit from build upon aspects of STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths learning.

Head of Design & Technology, Tim Parker added: “It was another successful STEM day involving problem solving through coding, collaboration and creativity. This Academy session had a particular focus on iterative design practices, which students engaged well with, demonstrating how to learn from failure to solve the challenges they had been set.”

Senior Head of House and Transition Coordinator, Kate Sommerville concluded: “The Island Academy continues to grow with the exciting launch of the Arts Academy alongside STEM. Both programmes focus on developing collaborative partnerships with our partner Primary Schools to develop the best pedagogical approaches and challenge students to embrace further experiential and inquiry learning.

“Both workshops focused on iterative learning and the Year 5 and Year 6 students demonstrated strong inquiry skills and resilience in critical thinking – trying ideas, selecting and discarding some and innovating until they achieved a successful outcome. We look forward to the next Academy sessions in May 2020.”