NARRATIVE
Winfield City Schools ensures that STEM learning experiences integrate all STEM disciplines with an emphasis on processes and practices associated with STEM. Winfield City Schools recognize that we are educating students for a post-modern workplace that demands various skills across a variety of situations and environments. As a result, Winfield City Schools expects educators, administrators, and other faculty members to collaborate across disciplines and break down the old way of teaching that is still present in American schools. Individually, educators are required to build on information and skills that students are learning in other subjects. Furthermore, educators are expected to collaborate with other grade levels to extend learning and experiences.
Educators meet on a regular basis to coordinate efforts and ensure that they are prepared for the cross-curricular or cross-grade-level STEM projects/lessons/activities. Moreover, educators participate in professional development opportunities that integrate high-quality curriculum with STEM disciplines to build capability. Excitingly, many projects at Winfield City Schools not only involve multiple subjects and/or grade levels, but they also involve community members or other professionals related to the projects/activities.
A few examples of Winfield City School's cross-curricular and cross-grade-level projects are the Student Spaceflight Experiment Project involving NASA and 3rd-12th grade students; the Scarecrow Project that involves WES, WMS, and WHS students, history, and engineering. Furthermore, we have a number of Engineering Design Process projects that integrate engineering with math, science, and/or ELA.
Strengths: Engagement is Winfield City School System's strength in Standard 11. STEM integration across disciplines, grade levels, and school systems are highly evident and important to our faculty and staff. All educators and students have opportunities to engage in ongoing learning opportunities to build STEM integration.
Opportunities to Improve: Winfield City School System displays two areas that need to improve: Results and Sustainability. Winfield City School System uses formative and summative assessment data to drive instruction, but we are not consistent with using data and documentation from the STEM Standard 11 type activities to display growth over time.
Glow Math.MOVGLOW in the Dark Exploration
Fourth grade students learned about oil and water and explored the glowing effects of why oil and water do not mix through being scientists. Experimenting with salt and ice had mesmerizing effects. By putting a spin on the traditional experiment we made it glow in the dark! Students were extremely engaged and excited to see the process and the ‘glowing’ results. By using the scientific process and inquiry, students were able to explore something completely new to them.
Copy of dash parade.MOVDash's Thanksgiving Parade
After reading Balloons Over Broadway and learning about the history of Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade as well as the history and evolution of the floats in the parade, students completed their own parade challenge.
Working in groups and using the Engineering Design Process, students used Blockly coding and Dash robots to ‘participate’ in the parade. Students used their math skills with measuring, rounding, and angles to code their robot to travel through the parade route. They designed their float using available materials and then tested their floats before making improvements.
rollercoaster fireball.MOVRollercoaster Challenge
After reading non fiction books about roller coasters as well as How to Code a Rollercoaster, students in fourth grade used the Engineering Design Process to create their own roller coaster. Students also had to write their own code for the roller coaster. They worked in groups and used materials such as tape, paper plates, cardboard rolls, and cups to create their coasters. They then tested their coasters and made improvements. Each team presented their designs to the class and others made suggestions on how to improve if coasters were not successful.
Students had a limitation of only 30 minutes to Create and Improve.
Guest Speakers
Guest Speakers are an important piece of STEM Discipline Integration in the sense that students need opportunities to see how what they are working on in class is relevant to the real world. Guest speakers offer a gateway into the real world. Most guest speakers come during for a school wide assembly, but others come to specific classes during specific projects to offer expert guidance. These are all opportunities for STEM-field adults to illustrate how important it is to be able to transfer skills across disciplines, but also to learn cross-discipline skills.
Students in Kindergarten annually participate in Johnny Appleseed day. They complete a variety of activites which include math (counting and adding,) science (how apples grow from seeds,) and art with apples. Parent and community volunteers help with the event.
dash parade 2.MOV
Scarecrow Project!
WCHS and WMS history students created scarecrows based off of Historical Places in Alabama and displayed the scarecrows at WES.
All students participated in a STEM project that included the scarecrows. Fifth Grade Enrichment students created presentation to go with each scarecrow. Then, the student linked his/her presentation to a QR Code. The QR Codes were glued to the scarecrow signs. The community, students, etc. could visit and scan the QR code to learn more about the place that each scarecrow represented. Third grade students used a map of Alabama to locate a historical place inspired by a scarecrow. They had to use a scale to find the distance from where they lived to the historical place. They used a measuring tape to measure the height of their scarecrow.
Journeys dash
