Year 7 students with the Snake

For the Science part of the day we were given two STEM challenges. The first challenge was to make the tallest spaghetti tower in 30 minutes that we could. The tower had to hold a marshmallow for 30 seconds and we only had 2 metres of tape and a bunch of raw spaghetti. At the end of the challenge our structure was tall … but not stable enough. It ended up falling over to one side.

The second challenge was harder, we had 40 minutes to create a tower made out of 50 straws and 2 metres of tape. The tower had to hold a ping-pong ball for at least 60 seconds but we couldn’t use the table or tape the ping pong ball to the structure. This time our creation was short but very stable. Even though the challenges were hard, it was worth winning chocolate at the end!

At Maths World we had to work in groups of three to complete fun and tricky math riddles. Tables were all set up with activities, some of them were hard and others were easy. One of the activities involved having to make a stable bridge to a number of koala destinations. It was much harder than it looked. The activities were all fun and there was no pressure. We were just using our skills and it was great working together as a team to make solving problems easier.

After lunch we had a show full of reptiles from a reptile zoo. It was fun, exciting and we learned lots of interesting facts! Afterwards we got to hold, touch, and feel the animals the reptile man showed us in the show, such as snakes, turtles, and lizards! I really loved the alligator Rosie. Our teachers told us that alligators couldn’t climb up on the slate, but I’m pretty sure Rosie proved the teachers wrong. She climbed up to the very top and looked out the window as if there was something interesting out there for her to eat. Even though it was scary having a snake around your neck it was fun too! At the end we were shown a Funnel Web Spider and Ranger Mick told us how they make the anti-venom.

PBL was all about having fun, learning and being able to conquer any fears of animals. Altogether it was a really fun day, we should have PBL day every day!

by Natasha G, Natasha B, Katrina B and Taylah M -Year 7 Students

Gallery