A team of elementary students from the MMSU Laboratory Elementary School Laoag Campus won in the prestigious National Mathematics, Science At Kalikasan (MathScieAKa) competition held at PHIVOLCS, UP Diliman, September 23.

“It was a back-to-back win,” said Julius Pumaras, one of the team’s advisers who accompanied the group to the competition, adding that this is the second consecutive year that the group won in such competition.

The event was a part of the 2017 National Science Month Club Celebration with the theme, “EarthBeat: Excavating the Abyss, Pulsing the Current, Steering the Youth as Stewards of Sustainable Development.”

Zyrus Angelo Antalan and Reiven Kate Agonoy, Grade 6 pupils, were declared champion in the Mystery Workshop (Bracket I) and landed first runner-up in the Take Home I: Growing Your Own Crystal event.

In the Mystery Workshop, Antalan and Agonoy created a jingle about taking care of the environment with a two-minute preparation and a 30-second runtime, while in the Growing Your Own Crystal, the participants designed their own mixture of aluminum potassium sulfate with the right amount of water.

On the other hand, Hateya Mikhail Pilar, Gian Danielle Romero, and Alyssa Gabrielle Mateo joined the Interactive and On-the-Spot Workshops, while Anthony James Rambaud and Eizzle Joie Felix participated in the Workshop Fair.

In the interactive workshop, Pilar, Romero, and Mateo performed theory and practice activities, while in the On-the-Spot Workshop, they made a windmill model and a metamorphic rock model, and performed an activity on surface tension.

Meanwhile, in the Workshop Fair, Rambaud and Felix made a paper shredder project and displayed it on an exhibit and defended the project’s details and mechanisms in front of judges.

MathScieAKa is one of the events in the celebration of the National Science Club Month (NSCM) which usually falls in September and is being spearheaded by the Philippine Society of Youth Science Clubs, Inc. (PSYSC).

Through this event, young students get active involvement in science clubbing movement and, at the same time, promote public understanding of science, technology, and the environment (ST&E). The NSCM also served as a venue for interaction among science club members from various regions in the country.

As the umbrella organization of all science clubs in the country, PSYSC is conducting this annual activity to emphasize the students’ roles and their active participation in the issues concerning ST&E today, and to realize the importance of science clubbing in the schools and society.

The MathScieAKa had two divisions where the students joined – the National Science Club Summit (SUMMIT), or simply SUMMIT-MSKA which was open to all participating high schools from all regions, and the MSKA Proper, a one-day event, which was open to all high school and elementary students who belong to a science club currently affiliated with the PSYSC.

During the SUMMIT-MSKA workshop, the students competed in the science engineering challenge and in the interactive workshops. On the other hand, the MSKA Proper, which is usually held in Manila every third Saturday of September, had two brackets in each of the five different workshops – the Interactive, the On-the-spot, the Mystery, the Take home, and the Workshop Fair.