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Student Curiosity Comes Alive with Unique STEAM Program at Daybreak Elementary School
Description
They are challenging young minds and making amazing “light bulb” moments a regular occurrence at Daybreak Elementary School.
On this episode of the Supercast, find out how teachers are blending Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math with a mix of the Arts, turning it into a full day of fun and learning that is sparking student curiosity and developing stronger thinking skills.
Audio Transcription
[Music]Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. They are challenging young minds and making amazing light bulb moments happen on a regular basis at Daybreak Elementary School.
On this episode of the Supercast, find out how teachers are blending Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math with a mix of the Arts, turning it into a full day of fun and learning that is sparking student curiosity and developing strong thinking skills.
[Music]We're here at Daybreak Elementary to talk about their STEAM activity today. Introduce yourselves and tell us what's going on.
Leslie Ewell:
Great. I'm Leslie Ewell. I'm the principal here at Daybreak Elementary and with me is Amanda Williams. She's my instructional coach. We started this last year in the spring. It's a STEAM Explorer. We got the idea from an elementary school in St. George, Diamond Valley. They are a STEAM school and they do these rounds too. So I went down and visited and saw what they were doing and just loved it so much. So then I worked to create it here at our school. And so what happens is every teacher creates a four-week unit with 40-minute lessons on anything in the STEAM acronym, which is science, technology, engineering, art, or math or they can combine all of those things in that unit. They are required to have the engineering process in that unit, so to follow that. And they can choose anything they want. The teachers can choose anything they want to do within those boundaries. And then we create some slide shows. The kids see the slide shows and they pick their top three choices. And then we place our kids in one of their top three choices.
Anthony Godfrey:
So each teacher has designed one and the students get to choose which one they want to be a part of.
Leslie Ewell:
Yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
Ok, great.
Leslie Ewell:
Yeah, and so we do our best to get them in one of their top three choices. We usually are pretty successful at that.
Amanda Williams:
We've never not gotten them into one of their top three choices.
Anthony Godfrey:
I’d say that’s pretty successful.
Amanda Williams:
I think that’s pretty successful.
Leslie Ewell:
Then they go on Fridays, every Friday from 9:30 to 10:15. They go to one of those classes and they get to participate. There's lots of fun, fun things going on. We have a teacher right now that's doing basketball using Newton's theory of physics. So they spent time talking about that and then they're putting those skills into practice. So you can see that today. We have our wonderful counselor that has been doing dinosaur digging and talking about dinosaurs and that paleontology.
Amanda Williams:
And he even brings in-- He has a lot of family history, which is really cool. A lot of these projects are passion projects from the teachers. So something that they're interested in that they can bring their passion and engagement with the students. So he has family land and has all these fossils and petrified wood, so he brings that in and he lets all of the kids see it. He has dinosaur teeth. It's just really amazing to see not only the students engaged in the lessons and exploring and participating in this hands on learning but also that the teachers, when you walk in, you'll just see their faces glowing because it's so much fun for them as well.
Anthony Godfrey: