700 school students took part in SIBUR's Summer Program of its Science Sessions

6 august 2021

The summer program of Science Sessions, SIBUR’s educational project, has drawn to an end. Its final stage included a series of classes for Pyt-Yakh schoolchildren teaching them how to create "smart" gadgets. A total of 700 children and their parents from six Russian cities, including Dzerzhinsk, Voronezh, Gubkinsky, Nyagan, Pyt-Yakh and Blagoveshchensk (Republic of Bashkortostan), took part in the program’s summer season. The Science Sessions project has been going on for six years, implemented as part of the Formula for Good Deeds, SIBUR's social investment program.

The project’s summer sessions offered classes covering two study areas titled Inventive Engineers and Smart Technologies. Both programs are designed to help popularize math and physics, develop students' engineering design skills and improve teachers' competencies in steering students’ intellectual pursuits. In selecting these programs, the sessions’ authors drew on unique educational research and the latest teaching practices.

The five-day program’s focus was on hands-on experience. The participants of the Smart Technologies course got acquainted with the basic concepts of electronics. Under the guidance of their instructors, the students tried out some of the modern technology’s solutions implemented in "smart home" systems. Using circuit boards and sensors, they got to assemble various "smart" gadgets such as a flashlight, a galvanic battery, a portable loudspeaker, a Tesla coil, and a sensor alarm. Participants in the Inventing Engineers program tried their hands at tinkering with the Livetronic constructor set. They put together various custom-engineered models including an Asimov robot, a rubber-motor car, a catapult, and a catamaran. All participants of the science sessions were able to take the assembled designs and gadgets with them for further use at their own homes.

I liked it because it was hard. It turns out that when something is complicated, it's also very interesting! Marat Chermantiyev, a 2nd grade student, said. It also made me wonder why there are so few inventors in the world. It's all because people are afraid of challenges. But you don't have to be afraid, you have got to invent instead, invent something new and useful.

Everyone was very impressed with the Science Sessions, both the children and ourselves, their instructors. We lived through such a wonderful experience together! We were quite happy with the format and results of this experience. Although initially we even had had some doubts: would our students be able to master such challenging topics as inventing and modern technologies? But the students did really great; there’s nothing they cannot do! Shafag Husseynova, the course’s leader, confirmed.

I used to think that the subject of physics was a little intimidating not only for the children, but also for their teachers. And, indeed, it is not an easy subject. That's why I especially wanted physics to become more familiar to, and better understood by everyone. So that one would be able to get hands-on experience with it, literally. Then one day I read an article about how physics was taught at a great school to... first graders. Their secret turned out to be quite simple: the curriculum was built around children's questions about how their world worked, about how gadgets and various phenomena around them worked, Ksenia Zayets, the developer of the Smart Technologies course and expert of the Smart Cities project, said. I’d like to thank SIBUR for this great opportunity to talk to children about physical phenomena using a language that they can understand and to help them really fall in love with physics.