Science spotlight

From solar-powered cooking to aquaponics, a series of ambitious projects to make the Earth’s future more sustainable were presented by Dampier Primary School students at a science fair last week.

As part of the school’s STEM program, every student has been involved in a range of projects on the National Science Week theme of Future Earth in the past few months and demonstrated their work to the rest of the school at an assembly last Thursday.

Senior teacher and STEM co-ordinator Anna Pianta said the projects had been entirely done by students and showed them the many different ways people could help improve the planet by preserving some of Earth’s most important resources.

“It gives them an opportunity to really explore how easy it is to make a positive impact, and that the little things count,” she said.

“It actually is giving them some ownership of it as well, and (the projects) all link in together into how can we help future Earth with water, energy and food.”

Projects included a homemade water filtration system, a mini aquaponics garden, solar oven, rubbish analysis and data collection from a set of solar lights, which will be donated to Papua New Guinea.

The youngest students were also involved, with pre-primary children using spare eggshells for growing herbs and Year 1 students making a “pledge to the earth” to be conscious about sustainability.

Ms Pianta said the theme of Future Earth was good for children’s learning by getting them to “explore science as a human endeavour” and apply theories to real-world matters.