Third-grade students at Clarkston Elementary School have been busy saving trash for the last two weeks. That garbage became the focus of their BIG STEAM Day lessons!
“Our goal is for our students to make a priority to reduce waste generation, then reuse, and then recycle,” Media Technology Specialist Carley Smith said. “When they learn that you can look at everyday trash and create something amazing, like a robot with it, that makes a difference.”
The students started with The Three R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle by Nuria Roca. Then came the challenge. Using items like paper, aluminum cans, and plastics to create a robot superhero with a catchy name, costume, and catchphrase. Students also wrote stories about their superheroes and proudly carried them from classroom to classroom, using them for additional STEAM lessons throughout the day.
One of the highlights for students was the rotation to the school media center. Robots made from specifically designed kits for STEAM activities with over 500 pieces to assemble were used to teach everyone coding. Students worked in pairs on the floor with mapped-out neighborhoods to code their trash trucks. The goal was to code their vehicles to collect the trash bins, dump them, and move through the community to dump as many recycle bins as possible.
STEAM Education is an approach to learning that uses Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Mathematics as access points for guiding student inquiry, dialogue, and critical thinking.
For more information, contact Jennifer Hines at Jennifer.Hines@TylerISD.org.