STEM Sisters
Published: 8 October 2020
With support from The Ogden Trust, Award-winning education charity HMDT Music is launching STEM Sisters: a new Year 5/6 arts-based STEM project to inspire new generations to pursue an education and career in STEM, in particular physics.
STEM Sisters showcases historical female scientists and mathematicians whose work is often less well-known but who have contributed in so many ways to major developments in our lives today, including (amongst many others) Caroline Herschel, Mae Jemison, Maria Sybilla Merian, Elizabeth Garret Anderson and Katherine Johnson.
In the Spring of 2021, the project will be touring primary schools across the UK and there are still limited spaces available to book. Email info@hmdt.org.uk or ring 020 8882 8825 to find out more and to book your place.
STEM Sisters will share and celebrate the achievements and life-stories of female STEM pioneers, through music, theatre and puppetry. Cross-curricular teaching resources will help embed the life and works of these women across the Key Stage 2 curriculum to enrich and enhance learning and stimulate interest. “The use of the arts ensures its accessibility to both teachers and students who might not have much science capital,” explains Creative Director, Tertia Sefton-Green. “It will help to teach the KS2 curriculum, support teaching for non-specialists, enhance children’s education, and provide career awareness,” adds Tertia.
All schools participating in STEM Sisters will receive a showing of a new film about key women in STEM; two in-school science sessions (which can be streamed if needed) including a crystallography demonstration featuring Rosalind Franklin and Dorothy Hodgkin; and a costumer interpreter workshop drawing children into Mary Anning’s world of fossils. A range of digital teaching plans and resources will be available to support these activities.
The STEM Sisters film tells the story of key STEM women who empower a lost child and would-be-scientist Jina, with the gifts of curiosity, courage, creativity, persistence and open-mindedness. These gifts help Jina become the best scientist she can be.
If you’d like to find out more or bring STEM Sisters to your school, email info@hmdt.org.uk or ring 020 8882 8825.
