Chobe Junior Secondary School and African Child Day!

The team kicked off the week with a visit to Chobe Junior Secondary School for a fun-filled morning of interactive workshops. We were kindly greeted by teachers from the science department who brought us to the 200 kids we would be working with. The first workshop of the day involved making stethoscopes from paper tubes and cups, and tape and balloons. As always this was a firm favourite for both the team and the students and got everyone up moving and excited to learn about engineering! Building on the excitement, we then proceeded onto our next workshop - balloon powered cars! The students were creative and altered parts of the design to experiment how changing elements would affect the speed and direction of their cars. One of the students used 2 balloons on their design and found this results in double the thrust and therefore, due to Newton’s 3rd Law, double the force pulling the car forward.

Balloon car race and the finished stethoscope and balloon car model

The third and final workshop of the day involved building fully functional loudspeakers from paper cards. This day proved how well the team got to know each other in the past two weeks, as we have managed to run this highly technical workshop for 200 students as a well oiled machine. We split the team up into the hot glue gun station, wire stripping and terminal connecting station and the testing station. This proved to be a successful way as 98% built a functional loudspeaker that was tested with the students’ song of choice.

The pupils with their finished working paper loudspeaker

After finishing the workshops we received a brief tour around the science and computer labs at the school. It was amazing to see fascinating equipment such as 3D printers and laser cutters being used in class demonstrations. This is an excellent opportunity to spark students’ interest in STEM from an early age. But our day wasn’t over yet - we were lucky enough to catch the end of the school's talent show. It was an absolutely amazing experience to watch the kids relax and have fun - particularly on National African Child Day. The team was amazed by their dedication to hard work in both the classroom and their talent show.

Video of some amazing dancing at the talent show!

After the workshops we spoke to the students about feedback and how we could improve the day. Almost every response was for gifts! So we left the constructive feedback to the teachers. From them, alongside some good suggestions we mostly received requests to return!

Teacher feedback:

Head teacher, Chobe Junior Secondary School:“We really had a wonderful day. Our students were engaged in activities. Most of the time, for example when teaching science, most of the time they like experiments. But what they were doing today, is the most relevant to what they are doing in the school and it was practical and they enjoyed it. We also enjoyed the experience.“