Superintendent Update

In this last STEM Newsletter of the year, we want to highlight students' creative thinking. A creative thinker develops ideas, connections, and solutions to create something novel for an aesthetic or practical purpose. Creative thinking and creative problem solving are important in everyday life, all subjects, and all careers. This skill, which many associate with innovation, can be taught, learned, and practiced in any classroom. Read on to see how students applied their creative thinking skills through their STEM projects, builds, and computer science classes.

After reading Going Places by Peter and Paul Reynolds, TK students were asked, "What could you design and build using these materials?" They first needed to create a plan and then each student was given a bag of materials to build something to bring themselves or someone else joy.

Students created a model car consisting of a simple chassis and a straw-based axle system (simple machine). The students explored motion along inclined planes, friction, gravity, momentum, and potential vs. kinetic energy.

People of all ages love the kazoo-like sounds that come from this fun-to-make and easy-to-play instrument. Students constructed the RAFT harmonica using a rubber band vibrating between two tongue depressors to make different sounds. As students move the paper sliders, they explored the change in sounds to explore wave properties, energy, and more!

Think of a miniature golf course hole…and then scale that down to imagine a mini miniature golf course! Students designed one of the holes to contribute to their class or school miniature golf course. At some schools, this project was extended to other grade levels to create an even bigger course!

What is another use for a badge retractor? Well, a retractable car of course! Students learned how a badge retractor works and then created a car powered by the badge retractor. Students tested their car and observed how far it traveled!

How might we apply our understanding of circuits to build something we can use? Using the materials around their classroom, students built a working bot that can move and stand on its own!

Students created a working bot using a motor, battery pack, 4 wheels, and a breadboard. Once their bot was working, they redesigned it to make it their own.

During the Ancient Greece unit, 6th graders participated in a traditional Olympics. To celebrate, they modeled and 3D printed their very own medals.

Thank you so much to all of the volunteers who put together many of the science and STEM kits that went home to students throughout the year. The time you put into this project gave students the opportunity to continue to explore, build, and problem solve using their creativity skills.

One of the most important skills in becoming an excellent coder is the ability to communicate. The computer will do exactly what you tell it to do and if you don't give it a proper command then you will get an error message or its output might not be what you had intended. It is also important to communicate with others. Students code together, provide feedback to each other and problem-solve solutions. They also share ideas and create amazing projects. Keep reading to see how students used their communication and creativity skills this trimester.

Scratch is designed for students to work collaboratively. 4th graders focused on using conditional statements in their programming. The ask block allows the user to give input and the if statements respond to the conditions. Students created mazes, password projects, and more to demonstrate their understanding of conditional statements.

Returning to the classroom means more hands-on experiences for 5th graders. Students programmed the pocket-sized micro:bit computer, connecting external LEDs and using its buttons and other features to design a project of their own.

After spending most of this year learning to code in JavaScript, 6th graders were given the opportunity to create their own projects using MakeCode Arcade or StarLogo Nova. Sharing ideas while testing the projects was a highlight of the unit.

Thanks to funding from LAEF, every LASD student experiences STEM education and has the opportunity to learn to code through the computer science program. A huge thanks to our community for its contributions to LAEF. If you have not had the chance to donate this year, please consider a contribution of any amount: https://laefonline.org/District/1110-Untitled.html