Executive Summary

Lafayette Sunnyside Intermediate School is located in the heart of a manufacturing corridor and a world-renowned research university. Home to 1100 5th and 6th grade students, 75 staff, and 40 support staff, our STEM empowered students get a jump start on preparing for some of the best paying, most abundant careers of the future. STEM opportunities, at this level, break barriers for girls and minorities underrepresented in these disciplines. Above all else, our students are learning critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration, powered by the Internet of Things...which can take them anywhere they want to go.

Since being named an Indiana STEM Certified School in 2016, an increase in enrollment throughout the Lafayette School Corporation, construction began in the summer of 2016 to prepare for that growth. By August 2017, Sunnyside Intermediate opened the school year with 10 additional new classrooms, an expanded cafeteria, and a new ‘soft’ surface playground to accompany a larger ‘hard’ surface play area. Spaces of former special education classrooms were renovated and converted into the school's STEM inspired MakerLab.

Sunnyside's instructional schedule allows students to be assigned to core teams. Each team is comprised of a STEM teacher and a Humanities teacher. The STEM teacher instructs students in an integrated Math and Science curriculum, while the Humanities teacher instructs students in an integrated Language Arts and Social Studies curriculum. The core classes provide for 90 minute instructional blocks. STEM teachers and their Humanities partners meet regularly throughout the week to plan and integrate their curriculums. Sunnyside has moved beyond a co-teaching model for STEM. Instead, our co-teaching model creates collaboration opportunities for STEM and Humanities teachers. Our curriculum is Indiana Standards aligned at each grade level. With constant review and scrutiny, the STEM PLC revises their scope and sequence to reflect current Indiana academic standards, which in turns brings a successful STEM curriculum that emphasizes an integrated approach to critical thinking and problem solving skills.

Sunnyside teachers collaborate on developing short and long term standards-based curriculum maps. Attention was given to identifying big ideas (units), vocabulary (core disciplinary ideas), instructional activities (skills and practices), and assessments that supported our main goal of integrating problem-based learning. The aim of these curriculum maps was to organize, align, and calibrate our curriculum with Indiana standards. We also wanted to check for redundancies and/or misalignments and furthermore, establish coherence within grade level disciplines and across grades. Emphasis was placed on integrating engineering design principles and practices in both the Humanities and Math and Science disciplines. Engineering design served as a vehicle for blending key concepts and ideas and promoting students’ higher order thinking.

All of our teachers are either K-6 or 6-9 Math/Science highly qualified, Indiana licensed teachers. All STEM teachers are offered continuous teaming, collaboration, and professional development opportunities and partnerships with Purdue University to enhance their practice.

Lafayette Sunnyside Intermediate School...home of "The Broncho Way".