Standard 5
Leaders ensure that all stakeholders have ongoing opportunities to access information and learn about STEM implementation.
Paine leaders ensure that all stakeholders have opportunities to access infomation and learn about our STEM implementation. We utilize teacher newsletters, school newsletters, and social media to share out our school's STEM mission, goals, student products, and STEM outcomes. We also provide education for external stakeholders through events like STREAM Night.
Ms. Jacobs shares about her kindergarten class's Mayflower STEM Activity in her weekly newsletter.
teacher Newsletters
One way that Paine Elementary teachers engage in communicating our STEM vision, mission, goals, and outcomes to stakeholders and the community is through weekly newsletters. Every teacher at Paine sends out a weekly newsletter to students' families. This communicates important happenings in the classroom, including STEM activities that are occurring. Many teachers at Paine have incorporated the use of Smore.com as their electronic newsletter. This gives an easy way of communicating with parents via e-mail and allows quick access to our families who are always on the go!
This newsletter highlights how science will be spent working on STEM. The specific STEM activity that students did was a Thanksgiving themed activity where students had to work together to design mini Mayflower boats, test them make sure they floated, and then to see how many pilgrims (pennies) the boats could hold. As a class we discussed what made the designs successful, collaborated on how designs could be improved, and then wrote reflections.
Here are a few additional examples of teacher newsletters at Paine:
Classroom STEM Activities shared on the
Paine Post
An example of the Paine Post that goes out to
parents monthly.
School Newsletters
Our school website and newsletters allow internal stakeholders to share and communicate STEM outcomes, events, and activities with external stakeholders. This includes publicity about STEM opportunities for the school community during and beyond the regular school day. PES and Trussville City Schools value the inclusion of our external stakeholders and communities. Information from all grade levels and content areas is included in PES website and newsletter communication. We also utilize a mass notification system (email or text) to remind parents of upcoming events (such as STREAM Night). These communications are shared with all PES parents.
One of our school counselors takes on the role of managing communications for PES. She regularly asks for input from all teachers to make sure that STEM events and activities are shared with external stakeholders. The school website and newsletters are updated and published regularly. We are able to access analytics from our Smore newsletters to see how many external stakeholders are viewing the newsletters. Our November 1st, 2022 newsletter reached over 3,000 stakeholders to share information about our EnRICh program for students. This newsletter data as well as attendance at after school STEM events can help school leadership adjust communication strategies and better plan for future outside of school events to make sure we reach the most external stakeholders possible.
Keeping external stakeholders informed helps students continue their STEM learning and conversations outside of school. By promoting after school STEM activities like STREAM Night and Family Math Night, parents are able to help extend their students’ learning outside of school.
STEM experiences are occurring often throughout the school. Through our multiple sources of communication, our stakeholders are able to remain a part of student learning and help support that learning. We will continue to provide multiple sources of information to all stakeholders about STEM experiences. This allows teachers to plan and stakeholders to engage while also learning about STEM implementation within our school.
Here are a few examples of school newsletters that include STEM content:
PAINE ELEMENTARY FAMILY STEM NIGHT - MARCH 2020
TCS Twitter Challenge
Social Media
PES uses social media to share and communicate STEM outcomes, events, and activities to both internal and external stakeholders. Information from all grade levels and content areas is included in PES social media communication. Our social media accounts are visible to all internal and external stakeholders. One of our school counselors takes on the role of managing communications for PES. She regularly asks for input from all teachers to make sure that STEM events and activities are shared via social media with external stakeholders.
The Paine Elementary School Facebook page has around 1300 likes and 1500 followers. A recent post about the STREAM Studio had 106 likes, which is about an 8% engagement rate with followers. We can use our engagement analytics from Facebook to adjust our outreach strategy in order to reach more stakeholders. With this data, we can try posting at certain times of the day depending on when we are able to get the most interaction.
Keeping external stakeholders informed helps students continue their STEM learning and conversations outside of school. By promoting after school STEM activities like STREAM Night and Family Math Night, parents are able to help extend their students’ learning outside of school.
Paine teachers, and all TCS teachers, are given the opportunity to participate in Twitter challenges to encourage communication with parents and stakeholders with activities going on in class, as well as having a chance to win prizes from the technology department based on the amount of tweets sent out. It's such a fun, competitive way to encourage communication!
Here are a few examples of STEM related social media communication: