SPECTRA

Your students can win science awards!
SPECTRA, or Science Program Exciting Children Through Research Activities, provides awards to students who undertake projects within a chosen topic.

It is designed to encourage and excite children to do science activities; to recognise and reward student initiative, both individual and team-based; to provide a tangible reward, and to minimize your workload.

Students carry out practical and observational activities, visits, research and experiments.  Activities are designed to ensure you and your students can use everyday items, and can be completed in the students' own time, or in class time.

What topics are available?
SPECTRA is provided for both younger students (junior years 1-4) and older students (senior years 5-9).  Current topics available for younger students include; Science in the Home; World Around Us; Plants & Animals; Inventing Things; Designing Things; Rain, Hail or Shine; and Pets & Gardens.

For older students topics available can include: Astronomy, Botany, Chemistry, Chemical Processes, Ecology, Electronics, Engineering, Entomology, Environmental Science, Flight, Geology, Horticulture, Meteorology, Physics and Zoology.

Fifteen new SPECTRA cards are now available for both junior and senior strands of SPECTRA.  Nine new junior topic cards include: By The Sea, Science on the Move, Science in Freshwater, The Sound of Science, Flying in the Sky, Science in the Bush, Finding Out about Ourselves, Rocks and Minerals and Time on your Hands.

For senior SPECTRA students, six new topic cards: Exploring Time, Energy, The world around us, Water! Water! Everywhere, Sounds around us and The Ocean and us.

How do I get my students involved?
Download a complimentary kit to help get you started.  The kit details how the program works, provides the forms required and samples of all topics.  If you require additional kits, you can contact ASTA directly.


How can my students win a SPECTRA Award?
By completing a project based upon a chosen topic, the student completes topic cards as provided in the SPECTRA kit.  You mark and collate the cards and when ready return them to ASTA.  Students can then qualify for a badge and a certificate.  Further details are available in your complimentary SPECTRA kit.

If you would like to know more about SPECTRA or place an order, please contact Joanna Pagan, SPECTRA Coordinator on 02 6282 9377 or spectra@asta.edu.au