Beakerhead day at Wheatland Elementary

Melissa Strle
Times Reporter

 

Wheatland Elementary engaged in Beakerhead Day on Sept. 15 as a way to offer unique programs and learning opportunities to students.
Beakerhead Day at the school offered an “in your classroom” series including a live webinar with U.K. inventor Dominic Wilcox, an ingenuity challenge and live guest speaker paleontologist Dr. Craig Scott from the Royal Tyrrell Museum.
Beakerhead is in its fourth year of operation in Calgary and provided a five-day offering in Calgary, Sept. 14-18, that brought together technical and creative streams of thought under the premise that high level ingenuity results from the merging of these two different areas of interest.
Science and engineering are merged or “smashed up” with the world of arts and entertainment.
Last year over 110,000 people took part over four days.
Beakerhead also provides a wide variety of school programming for Calgary and the surrounding area at the same time as the five day offering in Calgary, and Wheatland Elementary was one of the schools that participated in this program.
Carolyn Wallington, education programs manager at Beakerhead, said that at Wheatland Elementary, Dr. Scott performed a 45-minute presentation for Grade 4 students and spoke about general paleontology along with his specific area of study. This will tie into the Grade 4 curriculum this year.
Virtual Speakerhead at the school was a 45-minute live webinar with U.K. inventor Dominic Wilcox. Wilcox explained to Grades 3, 4, 5 and 6 classes why he became an inventor, what inspires him and how he comes up with ideas. Students were able to send him questions during the webinar.
Wilcox also shared some inventions that other children of similar ages had created, and revealed partnerships between these young children and older adult inventors.
Wheatland Elementary associate principal Michelle Rushford acknowledged the benefits of the program.
“It’s been amazing, a lot of fun and it really fits with so many of those themes that are happening in our school,” she said. “We are a math mind school so we work a lot to develop children in their mathematical skills and just trying to work with the whole ‘steam’ (science, technology, engineering, arts and music) initiative, so it really fits well with that.”
The ingenuity challenge taught pre-kindergarten to Grade 6 students to use their own creativity and critical thinking skills to come up with an idea on the theme of music.
“It was really exciting to watch the kids come together and use their own creativity and imagination,” said Rushford.
The goals of the program are to stimulate ingenuity, engage the public in science, engineering and art, break down barriers between people and sectors, build the economy, learn by doing and inspire tomorrow’s workforce.
Debbie Dalen, director of marketing at Beakerhead, said there were 60 different events around Calgary as well as free and ticketed shows and school programs.
She added that there was a strong general sense that this year Beakerhead was much bigger and there was much more awareness about it.
“Beakerhead in your school” was a new assembly series offered this year in which the program can reach many students at the same time.
“We are trying to find ways to expand our reach,” said Wallington. “It’s still new so it’s going to keep evolving and getting better as we get more feedback.”