Mosslands School: An Outstanding Commitment to STEM
by Educate Magazine June 10, 2021 · Latest Features
by All About STEM
After an extremely difficult year for all, it was absolutely fantastic to celebrate education and inspiration at the Educate Awards and present ‘the amazing’ Mosslands School with our Outstanding Commitment to STEM Award.
Staff, parents and students in all settings have worked tirelessly together to keep our young people learning throughout the pandemic and the awards ceremony showcased the resilience, commitment and dedication of schools across the region as they continued with activities, outreach and enrichment by adjusting and persevering.
We have no doubt if Educate was allowed a stage in 2020, that every learner, educator and caregiver would have been invited on it. With this in mind, we would like to stand and applaud our winner and bring their year into the spotlight. Take a look at some of the awesome activities that Mosslands offered its pupils and discover how they adapted to continue its projects through these unpredictable times.
STEM is an integral part of life at The Mosslands School. The school has actively been engaged with STEM for 10 years and maximises STEM opportunities for all students. Per academic year, students complete over 10,000 hours of STEM with 100% of Years 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 participating in at least one dedicated STEM event.
For the last two years, they have collapsed their whole timetable to make way for STEAM week and they also support primary schools and local uniformed groups!
Mike Lam, Mosslands School, said: “Why is STEM an integral part of life at Mosslands? In simple terms we do it for our students, they love it, it’s good for them, staff value it, it’s accessible and inclusive to all our students and it’s FUN! As our Twitter profile says ‘learning and fun whilst creating memories and experiences’. Learning in disguise!”
The Mosslands School projects included: Eureka! Mersey
Mosslands contributed to the formation of potential exhibits for the new Eureka attraction.
Leigh-Anne Stradeski, Eureka chief executive, said: “Working with the staff and boys from The Mosslands School has been a delightful and sometimes surprising co-creative and learning partnership. Our ambition is to develop our work with The Mosslands School on a long-term basis, to continue to inform the development of Eureka! Mersey up to and beyond its opening in 2022.”
All About STEM – LCR Make It Work Robotics Challenge
Students built a VEX robot and battled it out in an exciting arena-style competition, sessions developed STEM skills, showcased careers linked to manufacturing and engineering and highlighted pathways into them.
Mosslands Whole School STEAM Week
Learners made soap; designed, built and fired rockets; visited the University of Liverpool’s mobile planetarium; built trebuchets from the Middle Ages; experienced new Olympic sports; learned about sports technology at Anfield and Goodison; assembled and deconstructed a 15-metre suspension bridge; worked with Pepper the Robot from Daresbury Laboratories and so much more.
School groups also competed in the F1 in School Challenge, visited STFC for their own Mosslands Day and attended the Salter’s Chemistry event (Liverpool John Moores University), an Institute of Physics activity day (Liverpool University) and an RAF STEM day (Chester University).
As part of its extra-curricular offer, Mosslands visited Vauxhall, Jaguar Land Rover and Toyota car manufacturing plants, attended the RRS Sir David Attenborough naming ceremony, took part in a five day Space Camp, launched a helium balloon to near-space altitudes and more.
Lockdown didn’t stop them either. Alongside hosting its homeschool lessons, Mosslands continued its plans for a collapsed timetable and held its first virtual STEAM week! The focus was on fun projects created with household items – construct the longest paper chain, build an Eiffel Tower, make a moving or floating vehicle and a parachute challenge. Prizes were offered for effort and to promote teamwork and wellbeing, pupils were encouraged to use video chat to work with friends.
And finally, Mosslands took the time to honour STEM students, now grown, working as frontline keyworkers (yes, we cried too).
Congratulations once more to The Mosslands School! We’ll leave the last few words to Mike Lam, STEM enrichment co-ordinator and STEM ambassador, who is, without doubt, the blue-touch paper when it comes to STEM inspiration and activities at Mosslands. When defining a whole-school ethos, we think this says it all…
“We are really honoured to win this award. We have core values at school of care, commitment and challenge, so winning an award with commitment in its title underlines what we want to do at school. “I’d really like to thank all of the supporters of the STEM activities we have at school including All About STEM, Bentley Motors, and Unilever. Without them and their generous support our students wouldn’t get the most wonderful opportunities that we thrive on.
“Mosslands is fully committed to giving our students the best opportunities for happiness, good health and the success they all deserve and via the STEMsational medium of STEM we strive to achieve this.”
Is your school dedicated to STEM? The Educate Awards are open for entries! To find out more visit http://educateawards.co.uk/
Educate Awards & The All About STEM ‘Outstanding Commitment to STEM’ Award
The Educate Awards is an annual awards ceremony celebrating education within the Liverpool City Region, Lancashire, Cheshire and Greater Manchester. Now in its tenth year, the awards have grown due to the volume of entries and increased demand from schools to take part.
“This new Outstanding Commitment to STEM award honours schools, academies and colleges which have a range of exceptional STEM activities or have developed successful STEM projects that promote the importance of science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects to all students. Judges will be looking for evidence of high levels of commitment to these subjects, which could either be a specific and successful STEM based project or an overarching approach to STEM across the school or college.” – Educate Awards
The Educate Awards offers 21 accolades ranging from Teacher of the Year to Star Support Staff and SEND Provision, a night for regional schools to come together and celebrate their achievements.
