St Peter's Girls Prep continue growth mindset through Coding, Robotics and Online Chess

During the lockdown period, St Peter Girls Prep pupils have certainly demonstrated resilience and a growth mindset. With these skills in place, we have shifted the focus to Coding and Robotics. While our Grade 3 to 5 girls have entered the coding world of Tynker, our Grade 6 and 7 girls have taken on the challenge of Swift Playground, which is based on the Apple Swift coding language. We are delighted to have set up a Virtual Robotics Club for the girls on Google Classroom, which is filled with challenging activities for all grades. We also recently gained access to the Virtual Robotics Toolkit, which means that our girls will be able to build, code and run programmes for the EV3 Mindstorms in a virtual world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chess has always been popular amongst the girls and online chess has proven to be no different. In fact, we have been able to broaden our chess programme by offering more chess sessions. In doing this, it has allowed us to offer coaching at different ability levels from complete beginner through to intermediate and advanced. At the end of the week, under the guidance of our chess coach Tshediso Mpya, the girls are able to play friendly matches against each other. This has given the girls an opportunity to implement and test all the skills they have learnt against other girls of similar ability.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have been looking for an opportunity to start chess in the Junior Prep for quite some time and, in amongst all the madness, an opportunity presented itself. So much so, that in a space of a week it has grown from one class to three. In the Junior Prep lessons the focus is on fundamentals, learning the names of the pieces and how they all move. We look forward to it developing going forward.