Kazubgula Primary School

Our final school visit landed us at Kazungula Primary School where we worked with over 100 students from years standard 5 and 6. As usual we began with the human knot activity to get everyone working together in a team and ready to learn! The plan for the day involved paper stethoscopes, straw rockets, conductive tape circuits, pinwheel turbines and constructing a ball run.

After successful completion of their conductive tape circuits, many students decided to incorporate the LED into a creative drawing. They came up with some incredible designs.

The students with their finished stethoscopes above their heads

The students were extremely creative with their paper ball runs. It was amazing to see how creative they can be with only paper and tape. Some students added corners to decrease the speed of the ball, others crumpled up pieces of paper to create friction and lots of students experimented with different steepness of runs with the final goal of having their ball travel for the longest time.

Video of the teams working on their ball runs!

After speaking to the teachers we learned that the standard 5 and 6 students would be presenting what they learned from our workshop  to the standard 7's the day after. Not only does this broaden the number of those impacted by our workshops, but also reinforces the learning of the students who participated in the workshops. The teachers reflected on the fact that it is very rare for the students to get practical experience in STEM and how it can be difficult to teach the theory with no real demonstration - emphasising how impactful these workshops can be for a students understanding.

Head Teacher, Kazungula Primary School

“I think they have learned a lot even though they are not confident in expressing themselves. Most of the time they are using their mother language, but all their subjects are taught in English, besides Setswana… By the time you were with them, I was going around and asking what is this, and they tried to explain. The challenge is that we don’t have labs or instruments, especially for science. We don’t have a lot of things. People learn much more by doing. Maybe someday we will get there. Maybe one day someone from them will be at your University.”