STEM EXTENSIONS: School/program provides within-school and extra-curricular opportunities for students to extend STEM learning.
INITIATIVES/ACTIONS:
- Inclusion of special education students in STEM
- Providing STEM learning through Specials labs
- Planning for extra-curricular STEM activities
- Providing STEM field trips for all grade levels
- Creating STEM lessons for sharing
What Does It Look Like?
It is our goal at Beaufort Elementary to give every student the opportunity to be engaged in activities that extend STEM learning. To this end, we have scheduled three related arts classes that focus on STEM based activities in the master schedule. These activities include engineering for grades three through five, Lego Lab for grades PreK to five, and Computer Science (coding) for grades PreK to five. Additionally, we provide Makerspace activities in our Media Center. STEM activities are also provided for our self-contained special education classes as they are able to participate.
Another way that STEM learning is supported at our school is through our STEM specific field trips. Each grade level has the opportunity to travel on a charter bus to a destination in South Carolina that enhances the STEM curriculum. These trips include Edventure, the SC Aquarium, Riverbanks Zoo, and the Maritime Center. The experiences that these trips provide are invaluable to our students who would not otherwise have such opportunities. We also collaborate as a group to build a lesson bank of STEM activities including assessments that connect to all curriculum areas. This allows teachers access to ideas that can be implemented in their classrooms. All grade levels can see what lessons have been added which helps with vertical articulation. The school has planned many special STEM events and funds are allocated in our budget to support those activities. Some examples of these events are STEM days, school wide STEM challenges, and monthly challenges. Additionally, we bring in community resources to enhance our STEM topics. Some examples of these include 4H Clemson Extension, Beaufort Conservation Education Outreach, Arts Center of Coastal Carolina Traveling ArtsReach Program, Fripp Audubon Society, Marine Corps Air Station, and SC Aquarium.
We embrace the importance of extra-curricular opportunities for STEM. Some of our extra -curricular opportunities are provided through after school programs such as STEM Gardening Club, Storybook Engineering, The "A" in STEAM is ART, and an Engineering Club. Another extracurricular activity that we have implemented is our Family STEM night. Last year, we just celebrated our fourth Family STEM Night where families compete in Engineering Instant Challenges for STEM prizes.
Strengths
Our strength is that we provide a plethora of opportunities both during and after the school day for students to engage in STEM activities. These programs are available for all students to participate. We also include families during our STEM nights to encourage them to provide for STEM experiences in their homes.
Sustainability
The leadership team seeks teachers to provide afterschool enrichment in STEM. Funds are provided to pay salaries for teachers and buy supplies for these opportunities. Money is provided in the budget for materials so that all families can participate in STEM night challenges and continue the learning with a take home material.
Challenges
One challenge is that some students are unable to participate in our after-school programs because they lack transportation. Another concern is that attendance at Family STEM night is limited due to alternate or extended work hours.
Continuous Improvement
BES continues to provide funding and opportunities for students both during and after school. A goal would be to somehow find a way to provide transportation for some of these students.
PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT: Students demonstrate their learning through performance-based assessments and have opportunities to develop self-assessment and self-monitoring skills.
INITIATIVES/ACTIONS:
- Implementing a strategy to teach students to provide peer feedback to one another
- Providing training to help teachers create and utilize rubrics
- Teach students to use rubrics to evaluate their work
What Does It Look Like?
Assessment is an area in which we have made progress in the past five years. During the process of our STEM activities and lessons, students discuss strengths and weaknesses of their solutions. In our program we focus on the discussion surrounding our solutions and the testing of these solutions. This discussion is focused on analyzing and evaluating the success and the areas for improvement. We encourage students to share feedback on their own solutions as well as those of their peers. Students are given the opportunity to assess themselves using rubrics designed around STEM projects. Students are also taught strategies in which they self-assess and provide feedback to others. A strategy that the engineering teacher has taught students to use when providing feedback is TAG. TAG is an acronym for “Tell something you like”, “Ask a question”, and “Give a suggestion of improvement.” Using this strategy when critiquing builds allows the students to provide feedback to one another in an effective manner. This feedback is then used to enhance their plans for improvement.
There are strategies in place such as rubrics to help students as well as teachers assess student work. The TAG feedback strategy has been utilized in the engineering classes and it has begun to spread to other classes.
Sustainability
As new teachers join our staff, we need to ensure that they are provided with rubrics and strategies that we have used to ensure that we are consistent throughout the building. Utilize TAG as a school-wide strategy for feedback.
Challenges
There has been a great deal of staff turnover through the years. It is difficult to ensure that we provide more advanced professional development since we must provide initial professional development for so many.
Continuous Improvement
We need to develop a way to track STEM training so that we can meet each individual teacher needs. Surveys could be used to identify areas of need to ensure that appropriate training is provided for rubrics and STEM strategies.
STEM DISCIPLINE INTEGRATION: STEM learning experiences integrate all STEM disciplines with an emphasis on processes and practices associated with STEM.
INITIATIVES/ACTIONS:
- One to one device initiative
- Participation in training for using 3 -D technologies
- Teaching children collaboration, creativity, communication, and critical thinking skills across content areas
What Does It Looks Like?
At Beaufort Elementary, we believe that it is important to utilize STEM practices to help learners develop the 21st century skills of collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking, as they are engaged in problem solving activities. STEM practices are also used to develop SEPs (science and engineering practices) and mathematical process standards. In order to reach these goals, we have provided professional development planning time in which teachers have the opportunity to collaborate on STEM units that incorporate standards from across the curriculum with a focus on STEM practices. In our Engineering, Computer Science, and Lego Lab classes, students are exposed to various problems in which they utilize their knowledge of science, technology, engineering and math skills, concepts of design, creating builds, and testing solutions. Our other special area teachers (music, art, and P.E.) work to intentionally incorporate STEM processes and practices within their curriculum. The P.E. teacher has the students use their problem solving and gross motor skills as they participate in a lesson called Lava Lake. The lava is coming, and the students must get across the hot lava without being burned. They creatively use the given materials to figure out a way to get everyone safely home. In art, the teacher purposefully is including STEM into her instruction. One example is our River of Words project. Students learn about our unique ecosystem and are inspired to create a poem or an art piece. The music teacher purposefully looks for songs that are STEM related so the children can reinforce their STEM learning through song. We are a one-to-one technology device district, so we are able to utilize the programs these devices provide to enhance learning throughout the design process. In addition, we incorporate the use of 3-D printing technologies to enhance students’ solutions to various problems.
Strengths
Our strength is that our entire faculty is committed to the concept of integrating STEM into their curriculum. We are fortunate that we are in a district that can provide various up to date technology that we can utilize for STEM learning.
Sustainability
Administration and the leadership team are dedicated to ensuring that our school is a STEM school. STEM is written into the school’s vision statement. Funding and professional development continues to be focused on these areas.
Challenges
Though the focus is on STEM integration there is always an opportunity to increase the level of consistent participation throughout the entire building.
Continuous Improvement
The school will continue to provide professional development to ensure that our vision correlates to our practices.
STEM CURRICULUM ORGANIZATION: School/program provides high-quality STEM courses and curriculum aligned to recognized standards and organized into interdisciplinary frameworks.
INITIATIVES/ACTIONS:
- Planning for STEM learning across the curriculum
- Initiating the One School, One Book initiative as a shared STEM learning experience for all students across grade levels
-Creating a common template for lessons and the creation of a lesson bank
What Does It Look Like?
The school embedded STEM courses into their master schedule in the form of Engineering Lab, Lego Lab, and Computer Science (coding), in addition to Makerspace activities, so that every student has an opportunity to benefit from a high-quality course. These courses incorporate a variety of interdisciplinary activities that address curriculum standards for each grade level. When you walk into the Lego Lab, you often see students completing a build that has been purposefully tied to a science, writing, or math standard. For example, students build a maze with Lego® bricks and use small mirrors to reflect the beam of light so that it travels through the maze. Also, a large amount of time has been given to developing the STEM mindset in classroom teachers regardless of their subject area. The school grew from few teachers incorporating STEM activities to everyone participating. The biggest change we have seen is social studies and reading teachers who have embraced the inclusion of STEM practices and processes in their content areas. Students are able to develop better understanding of the history topics by participating in STEM builds and simulations. One example is the trench warfare simulation where the students must design weapons, "paper balls", that will reach the opposing sides' trenches.
Another way that STEM learning is supported at our school is that we collaborated as a group to build an interdisciplinary framework for our STEM activities, including ideas for assessment that connect to all curriculum areas. This allows teachers access to lessons that can be implemented in their classrooms. All grade levels can see examples of projects that have been completed by other grade levels which helps with vertical articulation. We are further developing the school by using common language and common templates for our STEM units and projects.
One new strategy that we included last year is the One School, One Book initiative. This is a school-wide reading of a literary text which inspires the incorporation of STEM with other disciplines. Students participated in engineering challenges, answering text dependent questions, and writing about what they learned based on the story. The success that we experienced with this project last year has us looking forward to reading the sequel, Bayberry Island, incorporating additional STEM experiences across the curriculum.
Strengths
Students have many opportunities to apply their learning through the incorporation of STEM with standards. The lesson bank created provides ready-made lessons for teachers to implement.
Sustainability
Teachers continue to look at ways to have students apply the learning based on state standards through high quality STEM activities. Teachers continue to generate new standards-based lessons and add them to the shared bank.
Challenges
One challenge is that we need to ensure that the placement of the lesson bank in Google Drive is always accessible regardless of its owner and its location. New teachers come to use these platforms with varying experiences in STEM, and we need to purposefully offer differentiated assistance as they begin to implement these practices across the curriculum.
Continuous Improvement
More emphasis needs to be placed on the STEM unit bank. We need to monitor the bank periodically to ensure that lessons are not being misplaced in Google Drive. Through this monitoring, we will ensure that new people get access, and that teachers are reminded to upload the effective lessons that are taking place.
