Maker City at Oasis Academy Connaught
We had the pleasure of running Maker City with the year 6’s at Oasis Academy Connaught this school term.
Maker City is a STEAM (science, tech, engineering, arts and maths) programme aimed at inspiring young people to design and create products using state-of-the-art technology such as laser cutters, 3D printers and sticker machines. We focus on collaboration, creative problem solving and social action to work together to design something that would be useful for ourselves and our community!
It is amazing for us to be able to meet young people in their school environment and offer a different approach to education; broaden their horizons and show them what is available in their local area and how they can be involved.
For the school sessions, we brought iMacs, drawing tablets, and robots to work with. At the end of the term, we bought the young people to KWMC The Factory where they could see their work being made using our other equipment, have a tour of the space, and get stuck in with our hands-on engineering activities.
Sound Wave at Parsons Street Primary School
This term we have run three Sound Wave taster sessions at Parsons Street Primary School with two year 6 classes. We were able to bring in percussive instruments and laptops for the young people to use in the sessions. In our first session, we kicked things off by playing a conducting game where everyone in the class would have a piece of percussion and one young person would come to the front to conduct the room. They could affect when people played and how loud or quiet, they played their instrument. The enthusiasm from the year 6 classes was great to see and we had multiple volunteers all wanting to have a go at conducting.
We introduced the young people to composing and creating their own music using loops on Garageband. In a short period of time, the young people showed their amazing creativity and quickly took to building their own songs with loops and were really excited to show the rest of the class what they had been working on in the session.
Our Sound Wave taster school sessions have also included young people creating their own podcasts! In these sessions, the young people worked in groups to come up with a theme for their podcast, something that they are passionate about or want to talk about. Then after some planning, and writing down a few key points they moved on to recording their podcast on software such as Garageband or Sound Trap. They also looked at creating some theme music or a jingle for their podcast which could be from loops or recording an instrument. Again, we saw amazing creativity from the year 6 classes at Parsons Street and a willingness to share their work with us which we always love to see at the end of sessions.
If you are interested in having any of our sessions at your school, please contact jump@kwmc.org.uk.
If you are interested in signing up for any of our after-school sessions or have any questions, please follow this link or email jumpstudios@kwmc.org.uk.