The 2020 SCLS Science Fair was successfully held. With focus on environmental protection and innovation, the fair aims at enhancing students’ comprehensive understanding of science and encouraging the practice of critical thinking in daily study and life.
This year, Liberal Arts courses were added to the STEM curriculum, forming a new STEAM curriculum with insertion of Politics and Chinese Literature.
The vision of SCLS STEAM Curriculum emphasizes on students’ independent research capability. The course of Politics focuses on students' overall thinking and macro vision, drawing arguments from history and current politics and making stronger statements through critical thinking. By taking part in practical activities such as Model UN, Mock Trial, and Mock CPPCC, etc., students learn a lot on how to apply theories to realistic social issues. Chinese Literature not only improves students’ basic language skills, but also their abilities to identify, appreciate and evaluate artworks of different times and styles, so as to cultivate correct values, elegant and noble aesthetic taste. It is all about knowing, telling and creating beautiful things.
In addition to Engineering and Mathematics, SCLS guides students to shape an interdisciplinary view from perspectives of Aesthetics and Sociology. Science and technology should not be cold because of rationality; instead, it should also have temperature with humanistic feelings and aesthetic vision.
As part of the Science Fair, the high school teachers presented open classes of a variety of subjects including Mathematics, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Politics and Chinese. The middle school teachers encouraged students to explore the world of science in a unique way by recommending books and movies about science. The books ‘Spectrums: Our Mind-boggling Universe from Infinitesimal to Infinity’, ‘ Stories of Your Life and Others’ and ‘A Brief History of Tomorrow’, and the movies ‘Moon’, ‘Arrival’ and ‘Ready Player One’ were all on the list.
The teachers hope to inspire students to think about the dialectical relationship between science and humanity future from different angles, and to build an international vision and a great understanding of multiculture. While learning scientific theories, students also reflect on the profound impact of science and technology on human society.
Like a booster, Science Fair pushes students to constantly try and reflect. It helps students to acquire knowledge in practice and offers them a chance to learn how to acquire what they need as well.
‘At first, I simply made a paper boat to carry coins without deep thinking. With about 20 coins on it, the boat sank. I started to think about the relationship between the buoyancy and the surface area. I tried a couple of times. At the end, I made a boat by folding up and twisting four angles of a piece of paper to make it watertight. By holding 54 coins on my boat, I won the first place of the competition.’——Grade 7, Li Jiakang
At this year's science fair, YITU Tech introduced various AI interactive devices into SCLS campus. ‘The device named A Smile Connects Everyone uses simple emotion recognition skills to show students' smiley faces on the screen. How Much Do You Look like the Same tells us the fact that AI has made it possible to build the worldwide facial database. We hope our students will realize that AI is changing the process of human-computer interaction and the connection between human beings.’ Mr. Lv Hao, CIO of YITU Tech, said in the interview.
Can't wait for the Science Fair of next year! That is so much fun!
