Teaching STEAM

I took most of the summer off to participate in family activities. It is important to set aside time for family and personal interests. Of course, my personal interests include what I teach so sometimes drawing the line between my personal hobbies and work is difficult.  In my previous blog, published in May 2019, I mentioned the Jr. Botball Competition in Northern Idaho. Last week I received an email from the Idaho STEM Action Center about some additional training they are giving educators who already took the basic training. I decided that this would be a good opportunity for me to get a better understanding of the different ways to program the KIPR robot. This robot uses a form of the programming language C. The students need to type word commands and pay attention to punctuation. The thinking is the same as any drag-and-drop programming, but students experience the joys of learning a new language. I filled out the application in about 3 hours. I took particular care to ...

I'm preparing for our annual STEAM Day at the school. Our theme this year is Recycling, Reusing Unwanted Materials. One of the local artists, Linda Canary, is volunteering her time to teach the students how to make broken tile mosaics. She asked me to help her collect some tile and to purchase some thinset. The McDonald's on one side of town just finished remodeling their building. In the parking lot, they had a couple of pallets of leftover tile and thinset. I contacted the manager and asked if McDonald's would be willing to donate their extra construction materials to our school's STEAM Day. Sure enough, they were happy to give the tile and thinset to the school. I had to drive our truck into town the day I picked up the materials. From the picture, it might not seem like a lot but it filled and weighed down the truck bed. Luckily my husband was willing to help me load the materials onto the truck or I might have been late to work. I have already given Linda all...

STEAM Day is an annual tradition at my school ever since I started working there four years ago (It was previously Art Day). Each year I pick a theme, write some grants for funding, and rally the troops to present some awesome workshops for the students. This year I had a volunteer who helped me plan the event, so we have some members of the community presenting workshops. The theme for the 2019 STEAM Day is Recycling, Reusing Unwanted Materials. I decided to offer a workshop time for students who like to take things apart. I visited a local thrift store and a consignment store to pick-up unwanted equipment. In the mix of equipment, I have some printers, a couple of fax machines, some blenders, old laptops, irons, and game console guitars.  With some of the grant money,  I purchased a variety of screwdrivers to add to the ones I brought from home. I unloaded my car and placed the equipment on some tables in my classroom. Not everyone will have a chance to participate i...

Five fourth-grade students from the Mission to the Moon class competed in the North Idaho Jr. Botball competition. They chose their team names, LiFe and LiPo, from some different battery types. Once we arrived at the tournament, the group decided to adopt a Harry Potter theme because of the building's old brick look. The two in blue chose to be brothers Fred and Rob. The other three decided to be Hermione, Harry, and Draco.  At a Jr. Botball competition, stations are set-up around the room. Students can choose which challenge they would like to attempt. When they write a program that commands their robot to accomplish the pre-determined goal, the group takes a video of the successful mission. The video is submitted to the judges who award a button and a ribbon for meeting the first challenge and then ribbons to add to the button for additional challenges. Each group participated in a pinning ceremony consisting of pinning the button on their teammate's shirt. Challenge...

When the students arrived this morning we opened up the worm bin and harvested four worms. We place the worms in a shallow dish and added some rubbing alcohol. The students understood that the worms’ lives were being sacrificed so they could learn skills important for their future. They watched as the worms struggled for a bit and then died. Watching this process impressed upon the 8-10-year-old students the seriousness of their club activity.  We placed the worms in our dissection pans, two worms to a pan. The students were excited to open the dissection kits provided by the Idaho INBRI Program. We looked through the new tools in the kit and decided to open one blade from each kit. The students used the blades to make a shallow cut down the length of the worm. One student commented that she felt like a doctor. The student immediately started making guesses about the organs she saw in the worm.  I gave her some sewing pins to hold back the worm’s skin and pulle...

On Wednesdays after school, students come to the STEAM room for an hour to work on their own projects. The majority of the students do things together on Minecraft, some students make movies using the iPads, others want to use different materials to make things. When the children arrived at Wednesday Workshop today, I had a stack of boards sitting outside my classroom door. Most of them walked past the wood and didn't pay much attention. The group, who would rather not use computers and iPads to make things, saw the wood and wanted to use it. "Dr. Stelck, can we use some of this wood?" "What do you want to do?" "I don't know yet." "I have a suggestion. I was watching crafts on YouTube last night and saw this great idea ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G5f_LpdLh0&t=1367s  starts at 21:39). Do you guys watch crafts on YouTube?" All three replied, "YES!" "Here, let me get my phone and show you." The ...

It's state testing season at the school. This means I don't meet with some of my student groups. Here's a conversation I had with one third-grade student this morning. "Dr. Stelck, can I come to the STEAM room during recess?" said the student with a sad demeanor. "Why?" I asked. "I don't know," he replied. "I happen to need some help during recess. Would you be willing to work?" "Sure, what are you doing?" "I'm taking apart pallets and need someone to help me take nails out of the boards. Would you like to invite some of your friends? "Yes." "Alrighty! I'll see you at recess." A troop of third-grade boys showed up in my classroom ready to work. I gave them each a hammer and had them get some safety glasses. I took them behind the STEAM room where I had the pallets stored. On the way, a fifth-grade boy, who usually spends his recesses reading, asked if he could join us....