Executive Summary

At Fairhope West Elementary School, we want students to experience developmentally appropriate STEAM education in such a way that sparks joy, wonder, and engagement; we want them to “dance” with STEAM. An environment that encourages collaboration, independent learning, and exploration fits with the natural development of students from preschool to third grade. “STEM or STEAM” represents a vision to help students build a strong core foundation for 21st century learning in early childhood education and beyond. Furthermore, we hope STEAM increases students’ engagement and love of learning.

Based on the STEM Immersion Guide from A Collaboration of Arizona STEM Network, our program development process has allowed our faculty to implement an introductory model to STEAM related opportunities. The Introductory Model of STEM Implementation includes a traditional school experience with STEAM opportunities offered in addition to the current curriculum. We hope to move to the Science Foundation of Arizona’s (2017) description in the STEM Immersion Guide of a “partial immersion” model of STEAM implementation. The Partial Immersion model describes STEAM opportunities that are integrated into the curriculum in a non-traditional way. Moreover, our program has incorporated a number of research and evidence-based models, frameworks and theories such as shared leadership, 21st century skills, cooperative learning, constructivism, inquiry-based learning, and problem-based learning.

Fairhope's iconic art scene and Mobile Bay.

Provide a general description of the learning experiences in which the STEM students were most successful, as well as those that need improvement for greater student success.

Our mission is to use innovative teaching to empower happy, successful, and self-directed lifelong learners in a safe, challenging, and engaging environment. We hope to increase teachers’ and students’ self-efficacy, our faculty’s collective efficacy, and our school growth mindset culture through continued growth in STEAM education. Bloomberg and Pitchford (2017) define efficacy as “the ability to produce a desired or intended effect. It is about the belief in the ability to effect change” (loc. 636). In other words, we strive to empower students and teachers to understand that they have the potential to do great things. We have imagined a school culture where everyone can believe in their own ability to learn and grow regardless of the challenge at hand.

Fairhope (West) Elementary School’s STEAM program has experienced many successes and identified areas of growth over the course of our program development. We think our program is successful when we see students engaged with the curriculum, guiding their own learning, and solving their problems while teachers facilitate experiences across content areas.

Our teachers know students the best, so the STEAM program began by building a professional learning team (PLT) of teachers and administrators to make decisions about STEM learning experiences for students. Teachers and administrators on the PLT identified several goals and made a plan for student success in STEAM. The big successes for the STEAM program so far are as follows: Pelican’s Nest Science Lab education, STEAM lab enrichment classes, STEAM resource library, Leader in Me, and 21st century learning.

The Pelican’s Nest

The Fairhope Educational Enrichment Foundation’s (FEEF) signature project, The Pelican’s Nest Science Lab (PNSL) continues to be a mainstay in teaching Baldwin County public school children about the local environment and watershed. All students at Fairhope Elementary School, now Fairhope West Elementary, attend the Pelican’s Nest Science Lab where they have a Mobile Bay field experience and a STEAM environmental lab. At the beginning of the year, the PNSL director, Kacie Hardman visits classes to promote Alabama Coastal Cleanup, a national and community effort to keep our waterways clean. At the end of the school year, guest scientists from the Dauphin Island Sea Lab and Alabama Department of Wildlife and Fisheries visit Fairhope (West) Elementary students.

The students who experience the Pelican’s Nest Science Lab also complete learning activities in the classroom before and after their field trips. The Pelican’s Nest director and STEAM PLT teachers have curated and created Google Classroom resources and curriculum for all teachers to use before and after students attend labs and field experiences. These activities align with core curriculum and provide rigor and relevance to students’ field and lab experiences.

Pelican's Nest Lab

Lab and classrooms provide content knowledge about our surrounding environment.

Pelican's Nest at Mobile Bay

Taking what students learn in the lab and classroom to the real world.

STEAM Experiences, Enrichment Classes,

Resource Library, and Lab

Students have a variety of STEAM experiences in classrooms at Fairhope West Elementary School. Classroom teachers design and facilitate quarterly project-based learning units with titles such as the following: Pumpkins, Light Up Alabama, Wax Museum, Water Water Everywhere, Market Day, Magnetic Force Cars, Balloons Over Broadway Parade, Habitats, Wacky Weather, Civil War Hymns, Light and Sound, Animal Adaptations, Matter, and Drifters just to name a few.

Students in these units utilize the Engineering Design Process, technology, and problem solving skills to create and improve their projects. In the second grade Wax Museum project, students pushed the teachers to new limits by asking and learning how to create their own websites. After Hurricane Sally, the sixth-graders extended their Wacky Weather PBL by adding their personal experiences through graphic design and technology tool, Adobe Spark.

Additionally, all students at Fairhope (West) Elementary School experience STEAM classroom opportunities and enrichment classes. During the first four years, the students attended the STEAM lab. As a newly configured kindergarten through sixth grade school, Fairhope West, teachers in grades two through six work directly with the STEAM coaches to incorporate the resource library and lab into the grade level project-based learning units. These enrichment classes expose students to technology literacy with activities, curriculum, and resources aligned to the Alabama Digital Literacy and Computer Science Standards as well as Next Generation Science Standards, and ISTE standards. Students in the STEAM enrichment classes work with coding, robotics, makerspace, and engineering resources from the resource library. Some successful activities include working with coding on code.org, typing on Typing Club, building amusement parks with Lego STEAM park, driving or bowling with Spheros, and creative building with the Imagination Playground blocks.

Funded by FEEF, the STEAM resource library contains a variety of research- and evidenced-based, standards-aligned curriculum and resources for teachers to use for STEM-related experiences and opportunities. Teachers collaborate with STEAM instructional coaches to plan STEAM-based units and activities using the resources from the STEAM resource library. Teachers can reserve the STEAM lab for these activities as well. Some of the resources available for students to use include the following: Ozobots, Spheros, Kibo robots, Lego Wedo robots, STEAM bins, Legos, Beebots, Lego STEAM Park, Lego Learn 2 Learn kits, and Imagination Playground blocks.

Some examples of student success in the STEAM lab include the creation of an Ozobot parade and practice for a regional robotics competition. Another legacy of Fairhope West Elementary School is the FWELive webcast live streaming broadcast studio. Students selected by their teachers participate in morning announcements or video recording. The principal communicates with the school and parents through the live streaming broadcast every morning. Student newscasters present the morning news to the school, and other students appear as special guests on a regular basis.

This year we have improved the STEAM lab by having each teacher utilize the STEAM lab for longer STEM-related activities. Our Professional Learning Plan goal this year includes a focus on improving our formative and summative assessments and measures of success for STEM-related activities in the classroom and labs. In addition, our Professional Learning Plan goal is to increase the number of project-based learning units helping to further our progress to our goal to have students participate in ongoing project- or problem-based investigations, schoolwide STEAM themes, and year-long integrated learning units.

Third grade student leaders programmed an Ino-bot robot to show to teachers how the robot can draw geometric shapes by programming lines and angles.

Students created a robot obstacle course in the gym.

Leader in Me

The Leader in Me program is a guide to promoting student leadership using the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. This program teaches life skills that are important for students in this century. The Leader in Me curriculum and program transforms school culture and promotes student-driven achievement and ownership. Students keep leadership binders for accountability of things such as their attendance and “wildly important goals.” This provides an individualized accountability process for students. Going forward, we will continue with our learning path in Leader in Me until all students are fluent in leading school events and setting and tracking personal goals.

Leader in Me Leadership Day

Student Light House Team answers questions from parents on Leadership Day

21st Century Learning

Twenty-first century learning includes essential skills such as life, learning, innovation information, media, and technology skills along with key core subjects. Our school has focused on infusing activities and curriculum to nurture problem-solving, inquiry, creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication into each classroom’s community and culture.

Students experience a variety of cooperative grouping strategies in each classroom. Many of our teachers include inquiry-based teaching and critical thinking strategies. One way that we explicitly include critical thinking is through our schoolwide subscription with BreakoutEDU. When students participate in a Breakout lesson, they are having fun while critically thinking of a way to break codes. Students also learn creativity through play with our Imagination Playground big blue blocks. Moreover, students communicate through a variety of ways with Seesaw interactive student journals.

In the future, we would like to use the Battelle for Kids P21 framework to intentionally scaffold 21st century learning from pre-kindergarten through sixth grade.

Provide examples of how the STEM educators and facilitators implement and sustain the core tenets of an effective and age-appropriate STEM curriculum.

Educators at Fairhope West Elementary School implement and sustain the core beliefs of our STEAM program in a number of ways. From our school’s primary vision of “Learning and Leading to Empower Our Genius”, to our schoolwide mission of creating a challenging, collaborative, learning environment that empowers students to become lifelong learners, all staff members dedicate tremendous thought, time, and task to promoting science, technology, engineering, arts, and math throughout the day via a 21st century platform that revolves around the five step EiE (Engineering is Elementary) engineering design process and the four Cs (creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking) Our model is used to incorporate iterative open-ended problem solving producing unlimited design possibilities. Children in grades kindergarten through second grade use a three-step model of the Engineering Design Process.

School administration at Fairhope West Elementary has empowered educators through shared leadership. This leadership approach has maximized teacher input and assisted in building consensus during changes. Through the creation and use of STEAM and Math PLTs teachers have implemented schoolwide STEAM goals and strategies. The broad goals include developing leadership, promoting 21st century skills, implementing project-based learning, using inquiry-based instruction across the content, establishing a professional learning community through professional learning teams, offering opportunities for vertical and horizontal planning, developing and implementing lessons based on standards that include a research-based cross curricular approach, integrating developmentally appropriate STEAM units in grades pre-k through sixth grade, procuring and using a plethora of STEAM resources for teacher planning and instruction and student creativity and products, and an increase in rigor and relevance. The following components are a part of this continuous improvement process and the ultimate goal of STEAM immersion.

The ability to successfully launch the STEAM initiative was due in part to the adoption of the Growth Mindset theory/practices and Leader In Me philosophy initiatives implemented prior to working on our STEAM goals. Through our work on Growth Mindset we moved from awareness to acceptance of all learners' abilities and promoted equity which in turn created the shift from teacher-centered learning to student-centered learning; it produced a common language within the learning community that assisted in eliminating negativity and promoting positivity. Leader in Me has established our framework for developing soft skills within our learning community. This has also contributed to our work on self assessment that has enhanced engagement. At Fairhope West Elementary, the staff believes STEAM education results in students who take thoughtful risks, engage in experiential learning, persist in problem solving, embrace collaboration, and work through the creative process. These are the innovators, educators, leaders, and learners of the 21st century!

The STEAM and Math Professional Learning Teams

Fairhope West Elementary teachers understand the importance of professional growth. Through participation in a wide variety of professional learning opportunities teachers are able to continue to hone their skills and make certain student learning is their focus. Through the establishment of our STEAM and Math PLTs, teachers are able to meet and receive purposeful information and training that gives them a laser focus on implementing STEAM in all classrooms with all students. Our eMINTS teachers participate in ongoing professional development and mentoring where they provide technology rich classrooms that foster independent learners who are creative thinkers and problem solvers. Through these teachers we are able to grow in knowledge and practice as it relates to STEAM immersion through integrated lessons and project-based learning.

STEAM PLT making plans for lessons that incorporate the Engineering Design Process

Teachers exploring the standards and finding ways to teach them by solving real world problems

Math PLT Google Classroom for teachers

Instructional Coaching, STEAM Lab and Resources

The faculty has access to STEAM that includes two instructional coaches, the Director of the PNSL, a STEAM lab, and a plethora of resources. For four years, all teachers brought their students to the STEAM lab during dedicated enrichment time where they received a lesson using the components of the Engineering Design Process based on the EiE philosophy or a maker-space activity. During the 2020-2021 year, grades two through six work directly with the coaches to incorporate STEAM lessons in the classroom. Grades kindergarten through first grade have regularly scheduled digital literacy classes. The lessons involve inquiry-based instruction based on a grade level standard and/or a creative outlet that is an extension of an existing classroom lesson or a lesson they are receiving at the Pelican’s nest. The STEAM lab is also available for teachers to use when enrichment classes are not taking place. The lab is home to amazing resources that include engaging manipulatives for tinkering and building and consumables for students to use to meet creativity or problem-solving challenges. The school houses tools, hands on manipulatives and construction supplies that are always available for projects and activities. This repository is forever growing and changing based on the needs and interests of all learners. Grants and donations have our resources possible.

List of resources

STEAM Lab is not only for the students. Teachers receive professional development throughout the year in reading, math, and STEAM.

How can we move a car only using magnetic force?

Collaborative Planning

Collaborative planning is built into the master schedule to optimize time for grade levels to meet and plan on a weekly basis. This time has assisted teachers in effectively communicating and planning quality lessons and units. This time has also contributed to the creation of successful STEAM lessons and projects. Teachers are able to offer and receive support in a safe and productive environment. This time increases exposure to and understanding of diverse perspectives. Teachers are also able to better analyze standards promoting more clarity in their approach to utilizing and developing a STEAM curriculum that includes thoughtful activities and assessments.

STEAM curriculum planning

Teachers planning the next PBL using force and motion

Executive Summary Text Only Version

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