Cooper Elementary students use ESTEAM
Once a week each student at Cooper Elementary School spends some time with teacher Stephanie Pick, and there is no telling what she may have them doing. The class is unique to Cooper Elementary School and it covers a little bit of economics, science, technology, engineering, art and math. It’s called ESTEAM.
This is the third year that Cooper has been part of a state program called Schools of Innovation, and ESTEAM is part of that program, Pick explained. She is the only ESTEAM teacher.
In the Bentonville District, elementary students have “specials” each week. Specials classes include art, music, library. In most elementary schools, physical education is also a special, but Cooper is a PE4Life school. PE4Life classes aren’t part of the special rotation because one of the tenants of the program is PE every day. So that leaves a space for ESTEAM on the specials rotation. This is the third year for the class.
Pick comes up with her own projects and often uses different versions for each grade level. The projects will often hit on more than one subject. For example, this week, third and fourth graders are doing “pixel art.” They copy a picture that is on graph paper by counting the number of spaces and filling them in on a new blank sheet of paper. There is math involved when the students are counting and transferring their counts. A small mistake near the beginning will ruin the entire project, she warned her fourth graders. They also develop an understanding for the term pixel which they will encounter during computer classes.
All grades have been doing a lot of Lego building, Pick said, which gives them hands-on engineering experience. She was allowed to purchase Legos for those projects. They also built marble runs out of recycled materials, which gave them a chance to talk about science and engineering together.
The ESTEAM class is also involved in the garden that the school shares with Mercy Medical Center across the street. Each class was weeding during the fall and will be planting this spring, Pick said.
By the year’s end, every student in the school will have a chance to work on each of the subjects represented by ESTEAM, Pick said.