Inaugural Year of STEM Clusters in the Lower School

Clusters are a 60 minute, weekly period, when all of our Lower School students, in mixed-age groups, collaborate together on a project based on a shared interest. Recognizing the national and global STEM initiatives, this year we decided to plan our clusters to expose students to a variety of STEM skills.  Through a “petting zoo” STEM experimentation period, students were exposed to many STEM activities. Based on that experience they chose one of the following STEM activities:

Makey Makey

LittleBits 

Take It Apart Party 

Paper Instruments 

Scratch Programming

First LEGO League 

Cardboard Machines

Rube Goldberg 

How High, How Far, How Fast

During our weekly STEM Cluster time, I would wander from classroom to classroom observing and interacting with each group. At every stop I encountered engaged, curious and hard working students. There was such a desire to accomplish something; students were hyper focused. At times this led to communication difficulties and conflict among group members. I realized how different this type of collaboration was in comparison to your traditional cooperative groups for a subject based class session. It will take some time for teachers to feel comfortable facilitating these sessions and for students to learn together, share with one another, and ultimately arrive at solutions and outcomes in a unified manner. The journey is well worth it! Observing a “water in glasses” concert, understanding the 10 energy steps of Rube using everything from a domino, to foam, plastic and paper tubes, to chairs, tennis balls and different toys, to watching students take-a-part toasters and hard drives, my weekly “glimpse” of STEM Clusters spurred my own learning in new directions.

I want to take the time to thank our Instructional Coach Bree @BreeABerman for all of her planning for, researching, and experimenting with the STEM activities in order for this inaugural year of STEM Clusters in our Lower School to be successful. I also want to thank Sarah for her work in the planning, logistics, and implementation of this new venture.