Space Lander Design Touchdown Challenge! With Science, No Mission is Impossible!

By: Ms. Vanessa Kay L. Melecio

Science empowers us to be knowledgeable of everyday phenomena as well as apply its concepts from simple to complex real-life situations. Groundbreaking inventions, daily discoveries and enthralling breakthroughs are solid proof of its immense impact in our life and in our vast world. This makes the discipline fascinating yet challenging to some students. In spite of that, learning science could be made fun in various ways in order to encourage and motivate students to learn independently, reinforce curiosity, enhance critical thinking and problem-solvings skills, as well as amplify creativity and awareness which cultivates passion for learning about the natural world.

With this, an activity aimed at engaging the students with hands-on experience and learning the concepts through experiential learning was conducted by Master Nattapat and Ms. Vanessa in the ICSE Science class. It aims at encouraging students to share knowledge among themselves and collaboratively work together to solve a problem which is an effective way to motivate, engage, and learn effectively aided by the teachers as facilitators of learning.

For this week, Mathayom 1 students of the MLP Program showcased their creative minds and critical thinking and problem-solving skills through an activity applying their prior knowledge regarding the concepts of air pressure and air resistance. Our promising young scientists and engineers were each given the same set of materials, and challenged to design and build a shock-absorbing system that will protect two ‘astronauts’ when they land. With utmost collaboration, they also rigorously tested and redesigned their ‘spacecraft’ before it was set to its final landing administered by Master Nattapat and Ms. Vanessa. At the end of the class, students’ group work were tested for its effectiveness at around 2 metres height and were given marks based on the criteria presented to them in the beginning of the class. With this fun activity, students were able to realise that with the knowledge gained from science, No Mission is Impossible!