This year, Springville Elementary School has been trying something slightly different from other schools in the district when providing students with STEM education.
In addition to other STEM-related items in the curriculum, students at Springville have been meeting together for about 50 minutes every week with all the other students in their grade level to get hands-on experience in coding, programming and robotics.
Once gathered together, students split into separate groups and focus on different projects where the students “learn by doing,” all with minimum instruction from the supervising teachers.
Some students find themselves on Chromebook computers where they’ll focus on a wide range of activities, from coding robots, to learning about force and trajectory when building virtual roller coasters, to even just learning the basics of computer programming.
Other students might work with programmable floor robots that look like bees, known as Bee-Bots, which allow students to input a set of commands and guide the robot through simple movement tasks over a map spread out on the floor.
And for other students, they’ll sit at tables and work with Cubelets, which are motorized, electric robot construction blocks that magnetically snap together and allow students an easy way to design build their own simple machines.
The new learning initiative started at Springville when Principal Gailen Mitchell wanted to provide staff members at the school with time each week set aside for common planning where grade-level teachers could meet and collaborate on lessons and projects.
Mitchell said with the teachers meeting at the same time, the school was left with entire grade levels of students who needed something to do.
“The teachers are all together and they’re using their time effectively, and we’re giving students an opportunity to do technology enrichment that we wouldn’t be able to fit into the regular school day schedule, and they’ve been mesmerized by this the whole year,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell said the program has received so much interest from students that the school didn’t have enough materials for the students to work with as closely as they wanted to, so at one point the school’s PTO donated $4,000 to allow the school to purchase even more robotics equipment.
“I have students who are interested in coding, programing, computers and robots now that would have never been interested before, but now they’ve been exposed to it,” Mitchell said. “It sparks their interest, it sparks their curiosity, and it expands their horizons.”
Technology teacher Prasseda Heredia said students working with the Cubelet construction blocks can follow small instruction cards or work together with their peers and just explore new ideas. She noted younger students as especially imaginative with the Cubelets.
“They don’t have all those fears that I think grow as you get a little older,” Heredia said. “They’re risk-takers, and that’s a big thing in education — not being afraid to try, taking a risk and then learning from your mistakes and each other.”
Technology teacher Kelly Schew said the programmable Bee-Bots were also great for the younger students, as they’re hands on, and with the different tasks, the lessons can be tied to other areas such as literacy, math and creative thinking.
“It keeps them entertained with the maps because it helps them visualize and use their imagination a bit with it,” Schew said. “They work wonderfully with partners.”
Technology teacher Chris Bowman said students working on the Chromebooks have many programs they can work on, and the different levels of those programs are scaled to give students even more freedom.
“It’s self-selection, so if it’s too hard for them, they can pick something else,” Bowman said. “They do that same selection with the books in their classroom where they’ll adjust to the right book idea.”
