Field Notes
Virtual Family STEM Night at Northview Primary School
In March, students from MEDU 530 with Dr. Rebecca Layton developed, assembled and distributed 500 STEM Kits and then facilitated a two hour virtual Family STEM Night at Northview Primary School in Kodak, TN. Every student at Northview was sent home with a kit which included materials for each of the seven breakout rooms which were designed specifically with the Northview community in mind. Students had a lot of fun while also working on problem solving skills, visual-spatial reasoning and collaboration with each other, their families and the UT community.
Students could move freely from room to room doing a variety of activities including: using play money to purchase items at the Smokies Stadium concession stand; searching for sneaky shapes in their homes in a scavenger hunt charting different physical properties; collaborating on designing the perfect ‘gaming chair’; creating popsicle stick catapults to send pom-poms and marshmallows flying; spending ‘Cougar Cash’ purchasing tickets for their dream adventure day at Adrenaline Park near their school; building model bridges for Dollywood and testing their strength in an Engineer Design Challenge; creating structures out of varying materials from multiple shapes seen on their playground; and even practicing sorting numbers in different ways to learn simple code! The evening was great fun and a huge success and it was inspiring to see so many students learning material by making real world connections to STEM outside the classroom and proving once again that through collaboration we all learn and grow together. Special thanks to Battelle and TSIN for funding the kits!
STEM Clubs and More
The East TN STEM Hub hosted a virtual after school conversation between a diverse group of educators who discussed ways to start a STEM club or do STEM activities/events in various school settings. A middle school science teacher, who started a STEM club for girls in collaboration with a teacher in the high school, presented how they got started and what they were currently doing with the club. She mentioned that one of the big surprises of starting the club was the students who were most interested in joining. She had predicted it would be the more academic focused students in her science class but it turned out to be kids that did not necessarily excel in science or school and yet found within the STEM club a way to connect to the larger school community and give them an identity within the school. These were students who enjoyed the open ended and exploratory format of informal science in a club setting rather than a traditional classroom experience. They were also students not used to being in leadership roles and they embraced the opportunity and showed incredible growth. A UT student who facilitates a STEM club at his former high school shared a similar experience emphasizing that the STEM clubs can offer hands-on and real world
STEM Bags
In December, the East TN STEMHub partnered with Centro Hispano to promote STEM access and interest by sending home 100 STEM bags for elementary students to explore over their winter break. Each bag included all the materials needed for hands-on engagement with both a physical and life science concept. The activities went along with two different STEMsparks created by UT students which are freely available at https://tinyurl.com/STEMspark on the website of the East Tennessee STEM Hub. These engaging short video lessons show that STEM does not have to always be about expensive robotic kits but can use everyday items to engage students in innovative thinking and problem solving. Since STEM is all about observing, discovering, and questioning the world around us, included in each bag was the book The Backyard Bug: Book for Kids by Lauren Davidson featured in STEMspark #14 ‘Insects’ which connects STEM and literacy. The three creative activities which follow the video introduction allow students to build a firefly home using snap cubes, design an insect sorting activity and create a model insect. Students used fishing line and bobbers to set up an experiment to explore the conservation of energy in an activity created by a UT engineering student in STEMspark #19 ‘Energy.’ The East TN STEMHub would like to send out a special thanks to Centro Hispano for providing Spanish translation of bag instructions and Girl Scout Cadette Troop 20117 for assembling the bags with materials for distribution!
Teacher STEM Game Night
The East TN StemHub hosted a diverse group of elementary and middle school educators for a virtual ‘Game Night’ Professional Development. The educators were sorted into various breakout rooms and were introduced to a variety of logic and math online games available for use in the classroom. In one breakout room, the puzzle game Set was played as a group. Set requires players to find patterns or symbols that are either all the same or different and promotes cognitive and spatial reasoning. It was incredibly fun playing Set together online but the game had its start as a set of playing cards which can easily be made by students to use in a traditional classroom setting. In another room, educators learned how to use the popular online game ‘Among Us!’ in the classroom as an Escape Room where students had to solve a variety of challenges. Hands down, the crowd favorite was the game SKUNK which requires only a piece of scrap paper and die (electronic die worked great too!). In SKUNK, players make intelligent guesses of odds and it is a fun, simple math game that could be used at any level. The night wrapped up with door prizes for all the participants! The Hub hopes to host similar PD opportunities for area teachers this Spring.
