Welcome Back!
I hope everyone has had a restful summer and was able to take a little time for yourself. The STEM Center will not be sending as many Smores this year, however, I wanted to get one out at the start of the year since it has some back-to-school activities and information on the new catalog and updated website.Wishing everyone a great school year.
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I wanted to share some updates from the STEM Center. This issue has some great resources for K-12, including a FREE virtual field trip for crash testing, unplugged coding activities, and a handful of Project-Based Learning unit summaries that may spark your interest.
Please reach out with any questions.
Have a great rest of your week.
The STEM Center Big Green Garden is starting to produce. So far staff (including myself) have harvested enough for 10 large salads! Different varieties of lettuce, collard greens, and radishes have been harvested, while the green beans are still starting to sprout. Learning as we go, I have left one of the radishes and one of the collard greens in the planters because they started to bloom. Once they have started to bloom they taste more bitter, so it is now part of a garden inquiry investigation. Will those 2 plants go to seed? Will we have more plants grow and produce food for us? Only time and observations will tell!!!
If you have checked an item out from the STEM Center, please be mindful that we will need to have it back at the STEM Center for an end of the year inventory check. We are asking at all items be returned no later than May 15th.
To return items, please write To: STEM Center From (insert your name and building here)
It can then be sent through School Dude. Your custodian can help you with a School Dude ticket.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation.
It is that time of year again. Our 4th and 5th grade students across the district will be engaging in a Shark Tank themed economics unit. Students will be thinking of problems that need solutions, using design thinking strategies, collecting data, researching, creating prototypes, and presenting their prototypes to a panel of judges.
The winning student or group will advance to the district finals that will be hosted by LTU in early May. They will pitch their prototype to local business community members.
This is a great example of students learning ELA, math, science, and social studies as well as Arc of Inquiry and 21st century soft skills all at the same time.
Staff across the district who attended Square One's Underwater Rover PD a couple weekends ago that a marvelous time! We were all absolute beginners and had no experience when we arrived. Square One has such wonderful presenters that created an environment for us to be comfortable not knowing and learning as we go. It was a great experience to be in the student's shoes as we built, felt proud, laughed and moved on from mistakes ( or as the instructors state There are no mistakes, just problems that need solutions.)