STEM Happenings by Quarter
Kindergarten - Building STEM skills Our kindergartners are busy exploring with different materials to build with. They are learning what STEM stands for and how to think like engineers. They are having fun while they experience trial and error.
Grade 1 - Our Senses This unit encourages students to develop observation skills through a series of investigations using their five senses. Along the way students will learn to use tools such as magnifying lenses and amplifiers. Students will learn about each sense through hands on discoveries and literature.
Grades 2 and 3 - Kayleen and David Go Digging! Students will be introduced to the field of geological engineering through the story, David and Kayleen: Go Digging. Students will perform investigations to understand rocks, soils, and materials. The engineering design project will require them to apply knowledge of these elements to design and build a platform.
Grade 4 - A Sticky Situation: Designing Walls Everywhere around us, earth materials like pebbles, soil, sand, and silt are used in human creations. What properties make an earth material useful? Different materials have different properties, making them appropriate for different uses. Students learn how materials were combined to create the Great Wall of China and explore which earth materials make the strongest, sturdiest wall. For the design challenge, students construct their own “mini wall of China.”
Grade 5- Catching the Wind: Designing Windmills This unit guides students to think like mechanical engineers as they use their knowledge of wind to design and create machines that can be used to capture wind energy. Students will look critically at several common machines and diagram how the parts of the machine interact with other parts of the machine to allow the object to function. Students will then use their mechanical engineering skills to explore different materials and shapes conducive to catching the wind, first by designing sails for small boats and finally for designing windmill blades.
Grade 6 - Pollution Effects on Plant Growth As people participate in the daily activities of their lives, how do the results of their activities impact plant life? Students will experiment to determine if typical liquids used and disposed of during basic car maintenance have a negative effect on plant life. At the conclusion of the unit, an environmental engineer will visit with the students to share the process of evaluating surface water and discuss a few local environmental current events.
Grade 7 - Spelling Bee Bumble This investigation will help students understand that the use of color is carefully managed rather than randomly applied when displays are made in technology applications and when visual displays are made for safety, advertisement, and informational purposes. Students will investigate how a visual display affects their ability to remember a list of words. The displays tested will be words in black on different colored backgrounds. The testing procedure will involve looking at a list of words for a specified amount of time. The list is then taken away and the students participate in the regular class period. At the end of the class period, the students are asked to recall and write down as many words as possible in a specified amount of time.
Grade 8 – The Nature of Flight The lesson will focus on how the principles of flight are demonstrated in nature and how nature can provide models for man-made air vehicles. Students complete a series of inquiries in order to gain a deeper understanding of the principles of flight as they make connections between living organisms and man-made air vehicles. This activity connects to Air Force Research Laboratory design and function of air vehicles which dictate specific designs for specific missions such as water landings, search and rescue, speed, cargo capacity, stealth, etc. Students will work in teams to engineer, test, and redesign their air vehicles in order to meet specifications for speed, distance, duration, or height.
Waterbotics WaterBotics is the curriculum component of a National Science Foundation ITEST (Innovative Technology Experiences for Students & Teachers) Scale-Up grant, aimed to reach middle and high school students with an intensive science and engineering experience based in a series of underwater robotics design and programming challenges.
