Our inner city students come from various backgrounds, where English is not always their native language. They come to school wanting to learn and work hard because school is the safest place for a lot of them. We are a Title 1 school where 100% of our students receive free breakfast and lunch.
When working in the Discovery Lab, it’s about applying creative thinking and design skills to transform our STEM projects to STEAM projects, encouraging students to imagine all the possibilities when their creative thinking meshes with engineering.
Going from a STEM school to a STEAM school is an important transition to show students the role art plays not only in the design process, but in everyday life throughout our world. It's also about engagement.
When students enter my lab, excitement builds because they know they have challenges that they need to face like engineers, scientists, and many other creative professionals do in the real world. Students love working with their hands to create something or solve a problem. Our school is a wonderful place to learn because of the environment created by the staff. We show our love of learning to our students.
My Project
Learning in the 21st century is all about keeping up with technology. The hard part for schools is, after 4 years, a lot of programs we use change, but we don't have the money to update them. I'm looking to start updating our Lego Robotics Program so we can integrate the arts. We currently have the Lego WeDo, but now, there is WeDo 2.0! This program lets me take my students to the cutting edge of technology and programming. They will have the ability to build and create where their only boundary is the furthest their creativity and imagination can take them!
Programming is an important part of 21st century learning.
The WeDo 2.0 software teaches programming in an intuitive way – letting students bring their creations to life while sharpening computational thinking skills like logical reasoning, pattern recognition, and modeling simulations.
Students in groups of three or four will work together to design a Life Cycles Program. They will research the life cycle of their plant or animal, write the most important facts of each stage, label it on the presentation which can take various visual forms - from posters to 3D Models, to a powerpoint slide show or anything they can create to get their information across to their audience. From there, the programming comes in. Students need to measure the distance between each part of the life cycle. They will then program their robots to teach others about the life cycle they studied in an exciting way. The robots will not be allowed to simply drive from place to place, they have to engage their audience with how they move.
3rd in a set of three projects:Completing this final project, means we will have enough for one class to use! Please help make our dreams come true!
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Ms. W. and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
