Clubhouse National Science Week
20 February 2020
A great example of how Clubhouse members have shown leadership both in the Clubhouse space and with the community is the celebration for National Science Week 2019 with Rowville Primary School visiting the YWCA Canberra Clubhouse.
The purpose of this visit was for the Rowville students to participate in activities that utilise the various activities, resources, and equipment the Clubhouse offers. By engaging in these activities, participants explored their interests in science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics, and music, as well as practice the necessary skills needed for these fields. These skills included teamwork, creativity, problem-solving, lateral thinking, persistence, communication, leadership, and resilience.
Rowville brought 18 students to the Clubhouse and 6 Clubhouse members were the activity leaders throughout the day-long workshop. Another purpose of the visit was for Clubhouse members to take on a leadership role by leading an activity, sharing their knowledge, and welcoming the Rowville students to the school during break times. There were many aspects involved in the leadership roles of the Clubhouse members. When they arrived early, they were briefed on their roles and responsibilities throughout the day. Each member was allocated an activity station and briefed on how to run the activity. Here are some of the activities that they ran:
- Rainbow paper experiment – young people created rainbows on paper by dipping black card stock into a bowl of water with a light film of clear nail polish on it.
Photography challenge – young people experimented with different photography techniques including Shooting through an object to the subject, different lighting effects, different perspectives, framing the subject with complementary objects.- Galaxy Sky Painting – young people learned how to create a galaxy sky with watercolour paint.
- Green Screen Effects – young people used the green screen and the iPad to transport themselves across the world, or into their favourite movie or TV poster.
- Making a sound scape – young people searched for and layer different tracks to make soundscape that matches the following briefs, happy, electronic, and scary.
- Game Design – young people needed to improve a poorly structured game so that it works better, or build their own pinball machine.
- Sphero mazes- young people will build a maze with Lego and code the Sphero through it.
- Virtual Reality – young people will have a virtual reality experience interacting with a robot or going on a simulated roller-coaster.
Evaluation of the day showed that not only did the Rowville students learn more and feel included, but the Clubhouse leaders expressed that they really enjoyed helping the other students and wished that they could have shown them more activities.