By Lily-Grace Lee Ng

On 9 February, we had a STEAM induction day where both Year 9 STEAM classes participated in fun challenges and learnt what STEAM is about and some of the interesting things we will be doing later in the year.

STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths. My favourite challenge was where we had to choose three different cards: one was a type of product, one was the method we had to use to endorse the product, and the final card was our type of audience. My group originally got a new mode of transportation, improvised speech, and adults. We traded our improvisation card for two cards because we thought two cards would be more of a challenge.

Our new cards were: make a model made out of playdough and a commercial jingle. After splitting the group we decided that our new mode of transport would be a flying pig due to the saying ‘I’ll do it when pigs can fly’. Since our commercial had to be targeted at adults we added a coffee cup holder to attract more customers. For our model we decided to use not just playdough, we also used pipe cleaners because we found, through trial and error, that the pig was not stable enough to hold playdough wings. I really enjoyed hearing other people’s ideas and figuring out how to collaborate, so that we had a cohesive piece.

The jingle:

The Flying Pig

will get you to your gig

better than a flying ship or rocket,

keep the money in your pocket.

The nice heated cup holder

will make sure your coffee 

doesn’t get colder.

At one flap of a wing

you will want to sing.

Passenger:

I’m on a pig

This isn’t a rig

I’m flying high,

high into the sky.

Ten thousand leagues above the sea,

The more it rises, the better it’ll be

And on your fifth ride,

You’ll see the moon’s tide.