Blog

Year 3 to 6 IWD Conference

At Tintern, we are pausing to recognise many amazing and inspirational women whose lives have influenced us in a positive manner. On International Women’s Day, Wednesday 8 March, the Girls’ Junior School acknowledged the contributions that a number of women in our community have made. Interestingly, they all work in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) careers! We invited six Mums to speak to the girls at our IWD conference. They spoke about their careers and journey to reach their goals. We heard from a Environmental Engineer, Optometrist, Paediatrician (who also is a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)), Medial Laboratory Scientist, as well as mums who work in the fields of HR Technology and Geomatics/Computer Science. We split the Year 3 to 6 girls into House groups and each Mum spoke to each group in a round robin activity. We then finished off the event with a Q&A session.

This international day gave us the opportunity to boost the profile of incredible women in our community who are pushing boundaries in many areas. How fortunate we are that they took the time out of their busy schedules to speak to us all. They were inspirational and are incredible role models for our girls!

Prep to Year 2 IWD Celebration

As part of International Women’s Day, the Prep, Year 1 and Year 2 girls were given a purple ribbon to wear as a symbol of strength, fairness and equality. We discussed women gaining the right to vote and make their own choices about their career and lives. The girls all made a card to recognise and acknowledge a particular quality their mother has taught them such as confidence, bravery, resilience and kindness.

The Year 2 girls also explored a new coding app on their iPads as part of our focus on International Women’s Day and enjoyed the challenge of writing a series of algorithms to make a lady dinosaur move, turn, grow and shrink! As part of our focus on S.T.E.A.M activities, coding at an introductory level was explored in 2016 and the students have continued to develop and extend their understandings this year. Coding is a critical literacy skill that may open up a diverse range of job opportunities for both men and women, so it is an important skill to equip our girls with – we want them to be on the cutting edge of technology as creators, not just as users as they learn and grow. All the girls will be following up with these coding concepts throughout the year.

A sincere thank you to all our wonderful teachers in both Prep to Year 2 classes and the Year 3 to 6 area. They are so supportive of our girls and are very committed to helping them develop into confident women of the 21st Century who believe they can do anything they want to do!

By Anna Riddell, Head of Junior School and Early Learning Centre