On the move

Most of the time great things come from solid preparation and thoughtful implementation but not always. The What If? Club is one of the exceptions. It's not to say there was a complete absence of forethought. I had been pondering the idea of an after school program for 6th graders designed by 6th graders. I pitched the idea to the students. They were excited about the idea of creating their own program. They struggled with selecting an initial project. I chose to start the club with a session of  Breakout Edu . This is where the planning ended and fortune began. I was not available to lead the first meeting of the What If? Club. One of the 6th grade teachers offered to cover for me. Once the students learned that their teacher was leading the session, enrollment nearly doubled. The real magic happened during that first session. The teacher had so much fun solving the puzzle with the students that she started planning the next session, the very next day. The students were hooked an

We are more than half way through our first year as a STEM school. As we build our STEM identity, we have been busy as STEM learners. Both teachers and students are being risk takers. Our 5th graders and their teachers have expanded their STEM learning by programming robots. Their challenge was to build and program autonomous robots that could model a robot moving supplies in a hospital. This was a new learning experience for both the teachers and the students. STEM learning is really taking off in 3rd grade with gliders. Students designed gliders using an iPad app. They used their math skills to measure and analyzed the data as they tested their glider models. Leprechauns had to dodge the engineers in kindergarten. Students used their engineering design process to try and trap the tricksters. Although their final iteration was unsuccessful at capturing any leprechauns, lots of great thinking was accomplished. As a school we took a big step in establishing o