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At SPARK Academy, we believe that students should be empowered to direct their own learning. Learning is deeper and student motivation is high when our learners are able to make decisions about how they are able to demonstrate their learning.

Our second grade students participate in a fairy tale unit each spring in which students compare and contrast different versions of the same fairy tales. The culminating project for this unit allows students to choose what they would like to produce to demonstrate their learning. Example projects included a news broadcast utilizing green screen technology, building castles out of recycled materials, creating an invention that would solve a character’s problem, or using the app Scratch Jr. to create an animated retelling. Students were given time within the school day to work on their self-chosen project, while the teacher facilitated collaboration among teams.

Every classroom provides opportunities for free exploration during station time. Stations have multiple purposes in our instruction: skill reinforcement, directed tasks, or free exploration. Many of our directed tasks and free exploration stations have a STEM focus. For example, one week in one of our second grade classrooms, students worked on online reading, daily language practice, story writing, and a STEM station where students designed a tool for the character Alexander from Alexander, Who Used to be Rich Last Sunday. In another second grade classroom, a teacher used Ozobot coding as a station.

Students also have free exploration time in the classroom, the Learning Lab Media Center, and the SPARK Lab. This gives students the opportunity to play with different building materials, explore the creative possibilities, and define material limitations. Many times during free play, our students recreate concepts they learned in the classroom, using different materials. This also gives students the opportunity to practice our school Success Skills, such as cooperation, teamwork, and resilience.

Each fall, our third grade students complete a comprehensive unit of study on severe weather, with a specific focus on hurricanes. As this time of year is often when the southern United States experiences hurricanes, students are very engaged and naturally motivated to learn as much as possible. In the classrooms, students learn specifically about Hurricane Katrina and design levees to hold back flood water. In the SPARK Lab, pairs of students are challenged to design a roof for a prefabricated house that will withstand the wind and rain produced by a Category 3 hurricane.

During the course of the unit, students investigate damage done at each hurricane category, test different shapes of roof design, test roof materials for durability and water resistance, and examine diagrams of how roofs are constructed. For their final project, pairs of students must make decisions based on all of the tests they have done up to that point, decide the best roof shape, building material, and layers, and then conduct tests of their roof design on their own. For testing, each student is provided with a LEGO house structure and three cotton balls to protect inside the LEGO house. With teacher facilitation, students have to self monitor their building, testing, and redesign all within a set period of time. They have to choose their materials and construction carefully, knowing that their final test will be conducted by the teacher.

Our strength as a faculty is providing experiences for our students to investigate a variety of STEM topics and materials as they direct their own learning. As we continue to improve, we would like to provide more opportunities for students to self-select areas of growth and learning based on their own learning skills and weaknesses. One of our goals this year is to implement student-led conferences this October, allowing our students opportunities to identify and express their own strengths, weaknesses, and interests. This, in turn, will inform our teachers’ decisions as they design centers and experiences for the remaining units.