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Standard 9: School/program provides within-school and extra-curricular opportunities for students to extend STEM learning.
Standard 9: School/program provides within-school and extra-curricular opportunities for students to extend STEM learning.
We want our students to realize that STEAM skills are an everyday part of life and are not limited to just a classroom setting. Each year, we seek out and create more opportunities and funding for our students to extend their STEAM learning. All students have the chance to enjoy special days such as Digital Learning Day, Hour of Code, Think about It Thursday, Club Days, and others. These are special days during which students stretch their STEAM learning. STEAM professionals from the community interact with students on special days and allow them to have experiences with STEAM related activities.
Digital Learning Day is a yearly celebration of innovation in the classroom and is a day where CES educators take risks by pushing their students to the next level in technology. It is an exciting day where teachers and students are motivated to try new things and sometimes those things become more common practice in the classroom. For example, in 2020, the focus was to push students to use a technology tool that would enhance their creativity. Kindergarten explored Autodraw to illustrate different math problems and created a weather report using the DoInk app and a green screen as a part of their weather PBL. First grade celebrated DLDay and Black History Month by creating a news story of a Black History figure using DoInk and a green screen. Storyboard That was used by second grade to illustrate a narrative the students had written. Third grade used Animoto or Adobe Spark to make informational videos about a topic of choice. Sound wave art was created using Google Slides as a part of fourth grade’s sound PBL.
Every year, CES participates in Hour of Code to celebrate computer science. We believe all students should have the opportunity to learn computer science to nurture problem-solving skills, logic, and creativity. We let students choose which activity they want to code on code.org, or any other coding site, and share it with their peers.
Our principal, Mrs. Nicki Bryant, started Think About It Thursdays to offer convenient, extra-curricular opportunities to all students. They are posted on Class Dojo for all grade levels. Parents can also partake in the learning with their child. Think About It Thursdays starts with intriguing questions that stimulate students' minds and gets them wondering. They are challenged to research and find answers to these questions. Sometimes they have simulations to go through to help in their learning. Think About It Thursdays also promotes Computational Thinking. These activities are thought-provoking, engaging, and encourage students to research on their own.
Students in third and fourth grade were selected to participate on a math team. Participants were selected based on their STAR Math scores and their behavior. The seven highest scores in each grade were chosen. We signed up to compete in the Perennial Math Tournament in Sylacauga, AL. Leading up to the tournament, we met once a week to practice after school. Students collaborated to complete multi-step word problems dealing with the four operations. At times, students would work independently and then compare answers. More often, however, they would discuss possible ways to solve each step with guidance from teacher sponsors, Ms. Carpenter and Mrs. Dennis.
Students have also had many in-school opportunities to interact with the arts while participating with the visiting ballet company, University of Alabama Theatre Group, watching the Alabama Ballet’s performance of the Nutcracker via live stream, and others. Our Family STEAM Nights and take home activities have been very successful as well in extending STEAM learning and making a family connection. Students further extend their learning by working on projects during and after school and showcasing their work during one of several STEAM events such as our district’s Innovative Learning Showcase or E3 Competition.
The Engage Elementary Engineers, E3, Competition is a science festival created by AMSTI and the University of Montevallo to provide authentic and engaging STEAM experiences to elementary students. Students from CES are selected to be on the E3 team by their teachers due to their interest in engineering and present strong engineering skills in the classroom. The team consists of both male and female students in third and fourth grades. Students are involved in hands-on science and engineering activities that promote critical thinking, teamwork, and interest in STEAM occupations. On the day of the competition, the element of mystery is created when students are required to transfer and test their knowledge of STEAM content in a new situation with time constraints and mystery materials. Teams work diligently to compete and showcase their ingenuity without any assistance from teachers, parents, or spectators. After construction, students test their projects and receive authentic feedback from practicing engineers from Honda and Alabama Power who have an invested interest in STEAM education.
Our school also offers a STEAM Summer Camp to all students grades K-4. They are able to engage in all aspects of STEAM during the week-long camp. In 2019, STEAM summer camp was space-themed and activities were developed around this theme. Students created rockets that would land upright, learned about constellations through research, and coded Ozobots in different constellation patterns. Students also learned about moon phases by coding a BlueBot to hit all the moon phases in order and used Oreo cookies to create models representing the moon’s phases.
Strengths
We provide our students with so many opportunities to participate in STEAM in school, at home, or within our community. CES offers a variety of activities that are available to and will appeal to all of our students and help them grow into lifelong STEAM learners.
Sustainability
Over the years, we have seen significant increases in the number of STEAM opportunities that we have offered our students. We continue to plan opportunities for them to participate in relevant, authentic STEAM activities.
Opportunities for Improvement
As we strengthen our STEAM programs, we would like to garner even more support from the local engineers in our community. It would be favorable to have a wider variety of types of engineers to come to school for events such as career day. Each year, our plan is to offer more extracurricular opportunities. We would like to create our own in-house E3 competition in addition to the district’s. This would allow more students to participate and also create more competition. It would also be a great opportunity for our students if we were to extend the school year STEAM learning by introducing summer-long virtual STEAM. Students would be able to be a part of a Google Classroom that would be consistently updated with STEAM activities to participate in during the summer break. We are intent on offering our students as many opportunities as possible to grow their STEAM skills.
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