Standard 7
Learners engage in self-directed STEM learning guided by professional staff members who are effective facilitators of learning.
At Paine Elementary, our students engage in self-directed STEM learning guided by our professional staff members who are effective facilitators of learning. Students have opportunities in GaTE, Girls Who Code, and STEM choice boards, to be critical and creative thinkers. Our teachers provide self-directed guidance and support for students.
stem choice boards
Learners at Paine Elementary engage in self-directed STEM learning through virtual Choice Boards, which have been designed collaboratively by our district elementary STEM teachers. Choice boards were created by grade bands on a variety of topics and are updated monthly. When COVID became a reality, we began putting our heads together about how to teach STEM virtually. We found ourselves having to provide quality lessons to our students through a virtual platform. We created STEM Choice Boards and other virtual activities that we still use today for students who want to continue time learning on their own.
When COVID first set us homebound in 2020, all students K-5 participated in virtual learning choices provided through our district Classroom to Cloud platform. For the 2020-2021 school year, many of our students were still virtual, and Paine’s STEM Specialists were pulled to teach virtual classrooms. However, all students K-5 continued to receive STEM instruction virtually through STEM Choice Boards in Schoology. Students had access to these Choice Boards from home and at school during the first part of their specials in the gym (monitored by the coaches) before their PE time. They also had access to these Choice Boards anytime they wanted to extend their STEM learning.
The student responses and data pieces we received from student submissions and Flip Grid showed that students were engaged in STEM work and persevering independently. These activities led students through the engineering design process. Students were excited to share their work with their families and with their STEM Specialists.
This rapid shift to virtual learning forced us to think outside the box for providing authentic learning to our students. We learned so much about teaching and learning virtually, which has had a lasting impact on how we continue to teach and learn. We have made adjustments to teaching our STEM curriculum to better meet the gaps that students have due to those mostly virtual years. For example, not all students received consistent instruction in computational thinking during virtual years, so we adjusted students down one level in the code.org curriculum to better meet their learning needs once all students returned to in-person learning.
We’ve been able to take the best of what we learned with virtual teaching and learning and have continued to use it. We noticed that the STEM choice boards were effective tools for self-directed learning, so we have continued utilizing them to provide students with extracurricular and optional STEM opportunities to extend learning.
The STEM specialists continually serve as facilitators who provide guidance and support for learners as students use these Choice Boards as self-directed learning experiences. We have recently realized that we have not provided consistent opportunities for student to share their work from these experiences and are currently making future plans to provide ways to track student engagement and provide a more consistent platform for sharing completed self-directed learning experiences.
girls who code thourgh our Enrich experiences
Fourth and fifth grade girls at Paine Elementary have opportunities to participate in Girls Who Code through our EnRICh classes. The goal of Girls Who Code is to help close the gender gap in technology and to change the image of what a programmer looks like and does. During these meetings girls are being exposed to engineering and technology concepts and skills that focus on real-world application through collaborative learning experiences that develop problem solving skills through productive struggle. Girls Who Code HQ and Scratch as well as Code.org are used to springboard the learning experiences. These girls work collaboratively and individually to design programs in Scratch. They create the code needed to successfully launch their programs using Google Classroom as a platform to showcase their work and document growth over time. They present their programs to demonstrate proficiency of the focused skill with their peers and teachers as well as all who visit their remixed program in Scratch. Completion data was used from Scratch and Code.org to evaluate growth and understanding over time.
gate marketplace
Gifted and Talented Education (GaTE) learners at Paine consistently have opportunities to be critical and creative thinkers and have an annual opportunity to become entrepreneurs and own their own business. This event and learning unit is called Marketplace. Marketplace was started in the early 2000s as a way for students to learn about and practice math skills, design skills, and general entrepreneurial skills to lay the foundation for future business leaders. As the years have progressed, technology, graphic design, and the design thinking process have become an important part of the Marketplace unit as well as incorporating those same math skills such as data collection, graph making, money counting skills, etc.
All 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade GaTE students (as well as their parents, also known as the Parent National Bank investors) participate in Marketplace every year. The Gifted Specialists at Paine facilitate and guide the GaTE students through the process of building their business from the ground up. The decision-making and design thinking process is ultimately up to them! What products should they manufacture? Should they make food products or nonfood products, or even both? Do they have competition or are they a monopoly? Together with the Gifted Specialists’ and their parents’ guidance (and investment), as well as a checklist to keep students on track to be self-directed, students decide on product(s), calculate loans and interest, develop and design presentations for their investor(s), design and create advertisements to showcase their products and businesses, manufacture their product(s), and then sell them to their peers on our Marketplace selling day.
Once the official Marketplace day is complete, students put their math skills to work! They chart their profit or losses and create bar graphs through Google Sheets to show how their businesses fared against the others in class. By surveying and engaging with classmates on Marketplace topics (e.g. were there more girl entrepreneurs than boy entrepreneurs, how many businesses sold a certain number of products, food versus nonfood products, etc.), students develop a pie chart to showcase their findings. They also use their creative thinking skills, and are encouraged to be self-directed in the options they choose, to reflect on their learning experience during the Marketplace unit.
Marketplace is a HUGE success every year. While it would be hard to pinpoint the exact data where it shows students’ growth in math skills, students do show more proficiency in those math skills as well as proficiency in technological skills such as developing presentations, creating charts and graphs, and graphic design. An area that could be improved upon would be to survey students before and after Marketplace to see the impact on students’ understanding and use of technological skills as well as having discussions with teachers about the math skills they see improving with GaTE students.
The money collected from Marketplace (the profits made by each business and generous donations made by parents) benefits the learning of GaTE students by providing funds for supplies and materials needed for GaTE units and STEM learning. Robotics kits from LEGO (EV3 Mindstorms) and Firia Labs (micro:bits and code bots) have been purchased with Marketplace funds. Makerspace supplies are also purchased with the use of Marketplace funds.
Marketplace instills confidence in students at a young age that they CAN be a successful entrepreneur, sell products, and make money. Students can increase their understanding of how consumerism works from a new perspective. GaTE students consistently have opportunities to be critical and creative thinkers and are encouraged to be owners and managers of their own STEM learning experiences through Marketplace. The Gifted Specialists continually serve as facilitators who provide guidance and support for learners to be self-directed.