Undera PS 150 years

Learning through STEM

By Kelly Lucas-Carmody

Oct 29, 2026

For senior room teacher and STEM teacher Natalie Gaffy, STEM is about much more than building bridges and towers.

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For the past five years, Natalie has been teaching STEM at the school, with students from across the school coming together once a week for a whole-school, cross-age session.

Using the design process, students are given a problem to solve before developing a design brief, creating a prototype, testing it and considering what they could do differently.

“The kids have to solve a problem, come up with their design brief, then their prototype, and then we test their design,” Natalie said.

The projects change each term and have included robotics, where students used Bee-Bots and Blue-Bots to complete navigation challenges, building towers from different materials, natural disasters and designing structures that could withstand them, as well as exploring flight through kites and parachutes.

The current unit is focused on bridges, with students learning about different bridge designs and where their strength comes from before designing, building and testing their own suspension bridges.

The hour-long sessions are often spread across several weeks, with students working in small groups and learning alongside students of different ages.

Natalie said the cross-age approach worked particularly well, with older students enjoying the opportunity to support younger children.

“They love it,” she said.

“I think the older kids enjoy the opportunity to be the knowing other and to be able to support the younger ones.”

For Natalie, one of the greatest benefits of STEM is seeing students develop resilience when things do not go according to plan.

“I love seeing their resilience because often the first couple of attempts won’t be successful and it will fall apart, and then they have to think about another way of approaching it,” she said.

She also enjoys seeing the creative solutions students come up with.

With just 14 students at the school, Natalie said the small setting also gave students plenty of opportunities to have their voices heard and collaborate.

“They have got so much more of a voice,” she said.

“They are able to give their opinions, and almost have a discussion about their learning every time.

“It’s a pretty special subjects which students take so much from.”