The Wellington Catholic Elementary Skills competition increased more than three-fold in its second year and officials predict the competition could double in size again next year.
“Last year we had 70 students participate and this year we had 250 students participate so it’s grown exponentially over the last couple of years,” said Ron Aimola, Ontario youth apprenticeship program coordinator for the Wellington Catholic District School Board.
Ten out of the 17 schools in the Catholic board competed this year and Aimola forecasted that all schools in the board will take part in 2016.
Taking place at the St. James Catholic High School on April 9, the skills competition was for Grade 6 to 8 students with six competition options.
Those in the construction competition were required to design and build a miniature house. The technology competition required students to build a catapult that would fire marshmallows and the structure was tested for distance and accuracy. The Lego mechanics competition required competitors to build a Lego unit that dumped water on a candle to extinguish a flame. The Lego robotics competition required students to design and code a robot that would pick up a block. In the health and safety competition, students were required to enter a room, identify the hazards and do a presentation in the afternoon to show their findings.
“A lot of [students] I saw were like budding engineers, budding designers,” Aimola said. “They may not be artists or musicians but want to be creative in a different way and this allows them to do that.”
In the Wellington Catholic board teachers are challenged to prepare their students because this type of technological learning is not part of the curriculum.
“The Catholic board, they haven’t chosen to put their money so much into the tech shops in elementary schools,” Aimola said.
“So what many of the schools do is they buy some equipment and they have a locker or some kind of cabinet that they store all of their equipment, at the end of the day students that are interested in these activities go and do them like they would go and do a sport or a chess club or music or anything happening. It’s become an after-school kind of activity.”
But Aimola said teachers are willing to seek training because they see how valuable the skills are for students and that it is an area where many jobs are available.
“They’re willing to learn and they see it as a connection to science and math as well,” he said. “[Students] don’t need motivation when they’re doing that kind of stuff.”
Aimola said the main reason the competition has taken off is because it’s fun.
“That’s the main ingredient to anything that takes off in school because a lot of things in school aren’t fun,” he said.
“This really brings the classroom to life and the fact that they can use their skills that they get through science, math and all the other programs that they take, they can actually make it come to life.”
Though the competitors had an idea of what the competition would involve, Aimola said the actual plan and challenge was new and fresh to them on the day, forcing students to pull out all the stops in their problem solving.
The winners from each competition will go on to the Skills Ontario Finals from May 4 to 6 at RIM Park in Waterloo.
