Geographe Primary School takes out South West Science and Engineering Discovery Day

“Underdogs” at Geographe Primary School have proven their class in STEM taking out a win at the South West Science and Engineering Discovery Day.

After coming in second last in last year’s event, the school’s team of 32 Year 4 to six students worked hard to redeem their name, using problem-solving skills to come in top dog against eight other schools in the region.

The school’s science specialist teacher Jon Veitch was very pleased with the student’s success.

“It’s really nice (to win) because we were a bit of an underdog not doing too well last year and going up against some private schools . . . it makes you think wow these guys really won it on their merit,” he said.

“We recognise the students on their academic achievement in STEM or science or mathematics and it’s great to see them work together and really collaborate on some quite difficult challenges.”

The students met at Leschenault Leisure Centre and took part in two 90-minute challenges across the day.

Some of the challenges faced included constructing a prosthetic arm, a mars buggy and a water wheel.

Participating students said above all teamwork and improvisation was paramount across the day.

“We needed to use problem-solving and teamwork to make sure everyone’s ideas were heard,” Year 6 student Bridie O’Connell.

“For every single challenge we needed to improvise and come up with a new plan when things didn’t work out,” added Year 6 student Abi Lynch.

Competing against a lot of friends at local schools, the win was described as “fantabulous”.

“Some of the other schools we were up against we really good and had been training for months but we were still able to beat them which was cool,” Year 5 student Gilbert Jancey said.

“My parents were really proud of us all because some of the other schools are known to be super-duper high level in this kind of stuff (STEM) so they were very happy with what we were able to achieve,” added Harmony Budge, Year 5.