Researchers, educators, and industry leaders continue to emphasise the importance of 21st century skills in the classroom when it comes to preparing students for an ever-changing future of work. With skills centered around entrepreneurship, innovation, STEM, and global citizenship, it can be difficult to find a way to give students sufficient time to build these skills throughout their schooling journey.
At BOP, we've had the pleasure of doing exactly this with the team at Methodist Ladies' College in Perth as we deliver programs centered around 21st-century skills for all students from grades 6-10 along their schooling journey.
The aim of these programs is to give students an opportunity to exercise their skills every year over the course of five years, as they work on a different program delivered by the BOP team. Each program we deliver is different for the changing year levels, and gets students building on their skills from year 6 through to year 10. Here is an overview of what the different programs we run with each year level:
Year 6 & 7: Future Foods
Our Future Foods program is designed to get students thinking big when it comes to the food that we eat, and where that food comes from. Over the course of the day long program, students explore innovation in the food industry with vertical farms, 3D printed foods, and even things like lab-grown meats. From there, they choose a challenge to solve with three options on topics including food miles, restaurant menus, and food production.
Year 8: Designed Spaces
Our Designed Spaces program aims to get students thinking about user-centred design as they redesign a space around their school to be a space of the future. Exploring topics around sustainable design and technology in our spaces, students use a design thinking approach to redesign their chosen space, pitching their new concept to teachers at the end of the program.
Year 10: Career Innovators
Our Career Innovators program is one of our flagship programs at BOP, developed in collaboration with the MLC team. Taking place at the end of term two each year, the Career Innovators program sees students spending a full week getting a taste of working in different industries. With four industry-pitched challenges to choose from, students form teams and spend their week working to develop an innovative solution pitched by an industry leader. After pitching their solution back to the industry leaders, we then dive into our young professional's masterclasses to show students how they can showcase the skills they have built throughout the program to employers.
We absolutely love collaborating with the MLC team to deliver these programs, and seeing the students build their skills year after year is such a rewarding opportunity.
To find out more about how you can organise 21st-century skill programs for your students, make sure to head to our Incursions Page and submit a contact form to get in touch with our team.
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