Our Grade 6 Science, Math and Design teachers collaborate to give students new insights into flight, space exploration and rocket design. In this unit students learn about the societal and environmental impacts of flying devices and space exploration, and how to read, collect and interpret data related to flight. This year,
a visit to the Canadian Warplane Museum, a flight simulation in a helicopter lab, and a conversation with a rocket expert all helped expand their knowledge.

Then it was time for hands-on experimentation and problem solving. With guidance from their teachers, the students worked in pairs to design, build, test and launch a rocket made from a plastic water bottle. Their challenge was to create a rocket that would fly as high and as accurately as possible. Every pair followed a process that included researching rocket science principles, designing 3D nose cones and fins for their rocket using a web app called Tinkercad, and producing unique logos for their own space brand in Adobe Express. Throughout the assignment, the students recorded their inquiries, solutions, data, evaluations and learnings in a process journal. The project culminated in two very exciting launches, a test flight and a final blast off in a large park near campus.

"It’s very important to not complicate your designs if you don’t have to. You start off with very basic principles like the forces and the parts of a rocket. And you try to stick to those simple approaches because they are easy to understand. Don’t make things more complicated than they need to be. Simple means that you can quickly solve problems. If you add a small, extra thing to your rocket that doesn’t need to be there, it might branch out into many, many problems later on." -Guest Speaker Dumitru Diaconu, the Head of Mechanical Engineering at The Space Flight Laboratory(SFL) at the University of Toronto, had excellent advice for our Grade 6 rocket designers.

One of the highlights of the Grade 7 Design course is preparing for and participating in the annual Pinewood Derby. The goal of the project is for students to learn how design can improve performance. As the students design, build and decorate miniature cars for the race, they develop the practical and creative thinking skills needed to solve design problems. During the design phase, they can type the description of the car they want to build into Adobe Express and generate an image of the car they imagined. They can also upload their own sketch into Photoshop and use AI to generate a 3D image showing realistic images of the car from every angle. Once they’ve finalized their design, they can make their cars from wood or create them from resin using one of our 3D printers. The project comes to an exciting climax when the students race their cars on a timed track in front of a crowd of cheering spectators and receive feedback from enthusiastic judges.

One of the most memorable projects for students in our Coding classes in Grades 7 to 10 is learning to program and operate a robot dog. Before they can begin coding instructions into a micro:bit, students first need to understand how a canine’s limbs and joints move so their robots’ movements will look realistic and their dogs won’t fall over. In addition to learning about coding, robotics and canine biomechanics, this assignment helps students build strong problem solving, collaboration and communication skills. Their biggest rewards are watching the dogs walk and run in a variety of directions, find things and even play soccer.

This year, students in the Grade 10 Coding class adopted a practice that has become the norm for computer programmers – they started working with an AI companion called GitHub Copilot. This AI is a bit similar to ChatGPT, but it’s focused on coding. Working with an AI assistant enables the students to write
code faster and with less effort, and allows them to focus their time and energy on creating effective prompts for the AI, problem solving and collaboration.

Students in our Film and Photography classes are fortunate to have access to York’s state-of-the-art equipment and digital tools.This year, film students discovered they could use generative AI to create the location of their choice. By typing a description of a setting they wanted to use in their film into Adobe Firefly, they were able to generate three-dimensional locations that included historically accurate interior and exterior views - for example, one group created a 1940s farmhouse for their film.

The digital landscape is evolving rapidly and The York School is evolving with it. We will continue to stay ahead of the curve by leveraging best in class technologies that create meaningful learning experiences and prepare our students for workplaces of the future.

Read the 2023/2024 Year In Review here.