The Elementary Technological Skills Competition came to the Upper Grand District School Board (UGDSB) on April 2 and the 259 teams participating were ready to shine.
Over 1,000 students participated in the event, held at at College Heights Secondary School and Centennial Collegiate Vocational Institute.
Offered for almost a decade by the board, the Skills Ontario competition has gained in popularity, going from satellite competitions at individual schools to a board-wide event.
“It’s hands-on experiential learning,” said Chad Reay, elementary curriculum leader for the UGDSB.
“It just gives [students] an opportunity to problem solve; like true problem solving, they’ve got to figure out what they’re going to do and then design it and build it and perform a task.”
Generally in teams of four, Grades 4 to 8 students test their problem-solving skills in the competition.
“They don’t know before they show up what the specific competition’s going to be,” Reay explained. “But they do know … what last year’s competition was, the teachers know what the last five years (were like), so they kind of know a ballpark.”
Embedded in curriculum
Each group competes under one category in their age group. For Grades 4 to 6 there are four categories of competition and in Grades 7 and 8 there are six categories. Tasks this year ranged from designing and building a green garage to designing character animations and from designing and building gravity powered cars to coding and programming a Lego robot to perform certain tasks, Reay said.
Students don’t just decide on a whim to put a team together; they work towards the competition beginning in September.
“It’s embedded in the science and technology curriculum,” Reay said. “They’ve been given challenges, which is kind of like our problem-based learning, and they, from there, are playing around with these concepts and preparing all year.”
On the day of competition though, it’s all the students. Teachers take a backseat and watch what their students create and develop.
Though the student creations were tested at the end of the day, evaluation to choose the winning team from each division began the moment the teams arrived at the competition.
“It’s not just performance based,” Reay said.
“It’s everything from their cooperation and team work as they’re building. So as they’re designing and building, the judges are walking around, they’re also interviewing them. So they’ll be asking them questions about ‘how did you come up with the design, why this design, what problems are you having’ … as well as the performance test.”
The power of the skills competition can lead participants to seek further education.
At the end of the competition a Maryborough Public School team was among the winners for junior character animation.
The team, consisting of Madison Martin, Mackenzie Martin, Joanna Cashin and Brianna Flewwelling will be competing in the Skills Ontario Finals from May 4 to 6 at RIM Park in Waterloo. They will be given their task in advance and will be able to prepare their design before the competition.
