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SPARK Academy is a K-3 school building. As such, we strive to provide our students with as many real world connections to the adult STEM world as we can. For us, these connections come in the forms of Field Research Trips and guest classroom speakers. These opportunities connect our students to experts in a variety of high-interest STEM fields, both during the school day with speakers and outside of the school day with our field research trips.

A unique characteristic of SPARK Academy is our emphasis on field research and field expert collaboration. Our school, like many others, has students from varied backgrounds that come to us with vastly different prior experiences. To help provide all of our students with a similar point of reference, we provide a variety of field research experiences. While many elementary schools take field trips at the end of a unit of study, we choose to do our trips as an element of our research, often at the very beginning or in the middle of our unit of study.

This field research experience provides a common point of reference for both the student and the teacher, gives our students the opportunity to see and interact with experts in the field, and provides relevance for what they are learning about and working on in school.

Prior to the trip, teachers set both student and parent expectations on both the purpose and goal of the trip. While on the trip, students meet with experts in an arranged class or in a question/answer setting and collect information or data that is then used to assist with their project back at school. The number of Field Research Trips each student attends is determined by the age of the child, with the kindergarten students going on two trips and our third graders going on five. When we plan the trips, we are cognizant of cost to families, but thanks to our generous parents, our school system foundation, and our partnership with Friendship Church, all students are able to attend Field Research Trips regardless of the family’s ability to pay.

As we improve our units each year, we also improve on the tasks we expect our students to complete on the Field Research Trips. Our goal is for our students to have experiences in the field that they could not have in the regular school setting. We also want students to gather site-specific information that they could not learn from a textbook or internet search. As shown in our evidence, our first task was grade-level appropriate for our students, but did not attain the goal of providing unique information. As we moved to our second year, we asked parents take pictures for the students, allowing groups of students to access “the zoo” once they had left. Unfortunately, we discovered that the management of the pictures was a challenge. This year, we plan on taking student iPads with us, so they images are on the student iPads and are easily shared from one child to another. As with all new endeavors, we reflect and revise following each field research trip.

Following our Field Research Trips, our students reflect on their experience and continue investigating and studying back in the school building. The trip provides a reference for all students to connect to as teachers expand their learning and discovery.

There are times when we wish to connect our students to the adult world, but are unable to take them to a work site or location. In those cases, we invite speakers to come to our school, either in person or digitally, to speak and interact with our students. These visits are connected with our integrated units and allow our students the opportunity to speak with experts in their respective STEM fields. In choosing experts to speak with our students, our teachers work to find a diverse representation of STEM professionals.

• Morrell Engineering speaking with kindergarteners on building roads
  • https://twitter.com/ChristyDeal1/status/1060570916751638528
• Jimmy and Audry McMeans inviting our second graders to their farm during cotton harvest
  • https://twitter.com/SPARK_STEM/status/1185350473911549954
• Jimmy Bailey, local landscaper, talking with third graders about retaining walls.
  • https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.8cba9cf4-d975-4964-b8c1-6e3727d03193&share_token=EvVCt9yFSS-Lb4OvYkBJpQ&mode=share
  • https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.691325a5-5474-4f42-9cc7-e37f0777f834&share_token=OePNI3e4RaiWA8HtqvzUyA&mode=share
• Meteorologists Kevin Jacobs and Chelly Amin speaking with kindergarteners and third graders about severe weather
  • https://twitter.com/AbbiGriffin1/status/791280001727467520
  • https://twitter.com/jekennedy421/status/1054440511933767680
• Astronaut Don Thomas, courtesy of Marshall Space Flight Center, speaking with our students
  • https://app.seesaw.me/pages/shared_item?item_id=item.af714318-78aa-4d02-9a03-4daf52fdbdaf&share_token=uhHg7VaSR-yoFMLkx8JHHw&mode=share
  • https://twitter.com/jekennedy421/status/1159573738511314945
• UAH senior engineering students presenting their senior project to third graders
  • https://twitter.com/SPARK_STEM/status/930944554454454273
  • https://twitter.com/jekennedy421/status/930879154702241792

Looking forward to the future, SPARK Academy would like to provide STEM-focused after school and summer programming for both our students and for the students who attend other academies in our school system. As we become more established as a school, we can develop these additional opportunities for learning and we can begin to investigate possible sources for funding programs and staff.