Rural and remote STEM opportunities
Curate curricular and extracurricular opportunities to foster curiosity and growth, unleashing the STEM potential within girls.
Wauchope High School's dedicated staff encourage girls to engage with STEM via their robotics team, iSTEM elective, and STEM for Indigenous Girls’ program.
Robotics team
In the robotics team, girls:
- tackle real-world challenges through robotics and research, learning about engineering, coding, and problem-solving
- design and build robots that complete challenges on themed playing fields, like tackling climate change or improving healthcare
- develop communication and collaboration skills by brainstorming ideas, delegating tasks, and supporting each other through challenges
- develop critical thinking skills as they analyse problems, research solutions, and test their robots
- experiment, learn from mistakes, and adapt their strategies to achieve their goals
- showcase their robots, research findings, and solutions giving them a platform to share their ideas and develop their confidence.
iSTEM elective
The school has found that creating an iSTEM elective class in Stage 5 has allowed students to engage with different STEM concepts and contexts, such as designing for space and computer-aided design (CAD).
Female students enjoyed engaging with the Design for Space topic. They:
- could develop their knowledge regarding the conditions people and mechanisms are exposed to during space flight
- developed their engineering skills
- used microcontrollers and accelerometers, they designed, prototyped, and tested re-entry capsules.
Students also use their engineering design process skills in the CAD topic. Students have:
- made a range of devices, everything from fidget devices to spectacles for a specific purpose
- been supported and encouraged in STEM-based learning and expanding their critical thinking skills.
STEM for Indigenous Girls' program
The STEM for Indigenous Girls' program has resulted in Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander students engaging in a range of opportunities.
This program includes learning from the highly knowledgeable people from the Worimi Land Council who share their culture. They learned how the Worimi people used plants for food sources through to medicines, such as:
- the Lilly Pilly as a food source when allowing meat resources to repopulate
- paperback used for natural bandages, and soap bushes which can be used to make natural soap
- how to regenerate the land and replant after construction activities by making seed clusters to revegetate cleared land.
This program has led to:
- increased numbers of female students selecting STEM electives
- increased student confidence and willingness to share ideas
- students demonstrating a greater willingness to discuss and explain models, ideas and prototypes.
Students have engaged with the CSIRO young indigenous women’s STEM Academy and the Charles Sturt University 'Deadly Pathways Festival'. This has allowed female students to gain STEM industry experience and a greater understanding of the pathways into STEM careers. Students have expressed interest in careers like radiology and computer science, with these programs playing a pivotal role in solidifying their career choices.