Almost 700 Grade 4-8 elementary students from 41 schools across Halton converged at the New Street (Gary Allen) Education Centre on March 1 to compete in a wide range of skills disciplines, including robotics, animation, construction, mechanical engineering and TV/video production.
This was not your typical science fair from years gone by, with exploding volcanoes, charts of statistics or colourful diagrams of the body. These kids have a head start in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) world of tomorrow.
Teams of two or four, depending on the category, had to come up with theory, design, justification and execution to score points in a bid to become one of the top two teams in each category and go on to the provincial Skills Ontario Competition in Toronto on May 1.
This was the 31st year of the competition in Halton and the first in-person event since the pandemic; over the last three years it was held virtually. In previous years, secondary schools and elementary schools held a joint competition. Due to the growth of elementary schools wanting to compete, secondary schools in Halton now hold a separate event.
“The tech programs in elementary schools keeps expanding as teachers find out more about the benefits of hands-on learning and how easy it is to integrate things like real-world problems and authentic math into the learning," said Michelle Stone, HDSB instructional program leader (science and technology, safety, STEM). "The buy-in for kids to actually solve problems is so great rather than just read about a problem in a book. We can actually start measuring and building and planning.”
Many categories, such as Green Energy, Technology Challenge, Mechanical Engineering, Character Animation and Robotics, were divided along Grade 4-6 and Grade 7-8 levels. Workplace safety was also featured in competition, testing students’ knowledge after listening and reading provincial regulations and guidelines, and identifying potential hazards in real-life workshops.
For some disciplines, advance preparation was required. For others, students didn’t even know what they were expected to construct and demonstrate before walking into the room.
In one category of robotics, competitors from different schools were teamed up to underscore the need for communication and collaboration.
In one room, young students had to construct a LEGO vehicle that could manoeuvre through a maze while lifting and placing pieces, but had to efficiently choose how much could be done and where throughout the maze to place those pieces in a set amount of time.
Perhaps the largest and most prestigious competition was the robotics area. Some pre-competition planning was allowed, but the robot had to autonomously operate once the start button was pushed, again within a certain time limit. Remember, these are elementary school students. Hello, Jetsons!
Community sponsors helped fund the event. Teachers and students from the secondary school STEM programs also supported the competition.
To determine which teams will go on to the provincial Skills Competition in Toronto in May, each activity at the Halton level was scored based on safety, collaboration, design process, and use of materials and is compared with other school board district competitions province-wide.
Special thank you to Ms. Patterson from Viola Desmond Public School for showing me around and explaining all the competitions. Best of luck to all competitors.
