by Dave Bertrand
This spring, students at Port Elgin Saugeen Central, St. Joseph’s, Northport, G.C. Huston and Saugeen District Senior School (SDSS) are enjoying a hands-on science experience, courtesy of the Southampton Rotary Club and the Saugeen Shores Rotary Club.
Each Rotary club is sponsoring one ‘Scientists in the School’ workshop in each school. ‘Scientists in the School’ is a registered charity, and workshop costs are subsidized by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), TD Bank and Toyota Canada.
Susan Jacobi, Grade 8 teacher from Saugeen District Senior School (SDSS) said, “This is one of the best science programs out there, so I was pretty excited to have the opportunity to offer it to two classes at our school. Thanks to Rotary for all your hard work and for this opportunity.”
As well as complimenting the various youth programs that Rotary clubs already offer to our local schools, the Southampton and Saugeen Shores clubs are also attempting to address vocational issues in our community, by providing enrichment opportunities for students to further develop their interests in hands-on STEM studies (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). In our information age society, there is an ever-increasing vocational demand for people trained in these fields.
Dave Bertrand from Southampton Rotary Club and Tina Blair from Saugeen Shores Rotary club presented workshop cheques to principals, teachers and students from the five participating schools.
In the photos below, Grade 6 students at G.C. Huston are learning about the importance of balance in flight, Newton’s third law, the Coanda effect, and are building and testing parachutes, gliders and other airborn devices.
Also, Grade 5 students from Northport Elementary enjoyed learning about different systems in our bodies. Ms. Deacon said, “The students absolutely loved the opportunity to have hands-on learning and to build different systems within our body! The students were so engaged and had the best time! We were very grateful for the learning experiences as it perfectly aligned with our human systems unit in science!”
Grade 3 students at Port Elgin Saugeen Central School (PESCS) did a workshop on “Amazing Forces”, where they engineered a maze, and then used gravity and magnetism to navigate it. These eight-year-olds also studied friction’s effect on movement and learned about stored energy and controlling force. Constructing a catapult was one of their favourite experiments.
Other workshops to come in the upcoming weeks are genetic diversity workshops at SDSS and others at St. Joseph’s Catholic School, where they recently studied electricity.
