Inspiring students with STEM
State education commissioner talks technology with area schools
SARATOGA SPRINGS >> State Education Department Commissioner Mary Ellen Elia visited schools in the Saratoga Springs City School District Thursday to talk about the role science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) plays in local students’ education.
Elia talked with students at Lake Avenue Elementary School about their technology projects.
When Elia asked the students what they most enjoyed about the elementary- level Project Lead the Way (PLTW) pre-engineering course, which their school helped pilot, a student named Paulie said with emphasis, “Making a robot is just awesome.”
His classmate Ciara added, “You wouldn’t think fifth-graders could build a robot, but we can. It’s so cool.”
Elia toured STEM classes in two buildings in the Saratoga Springs City School District before heading north to visit other districts.
Elia, who came accompanied by local politicians, dis--
trict superintendents, STEM administrators and assistants, visited Maple Avenue Middle School first. There, she toured a sixth- grade computer programing and app design class taught by Thomas Coons. All sixthgrade students at Saratoga are enrolled in this course. They learn the basics of computer programing and app design in addition to problem-solving, communication and perseverance.
The district’s younger students will have a head start on those traits by the time they reach middle school, as the commissioner and her entourage saw at Lake Avenue. Teachers and students discussed how the school is truly leading the way with STEM integration at the elementary level through the use of STEM teacher leaders (the district’s math coaches) and the Project Lead the Way engineering curriculum.
Third- grader Maggie Trauter, who is in teacher Amy Shaw-Tingley’s class, was one of the children to speak. Maggie has been in the PLTW course for three years now, as the program ramped up from its inception at the school.
“We build with Vex Robotics kits,” she said. “We start with a wheel and an axle.”
In response to Elia’s query on what the students liked best about the engineering lessons, Maggie said, “I like thatwe get to build all these cool different things thatwe might not have thought to build on our own.”
Second- grade teacher Nancy Furguson said the children loved anything that culminated in a project. They loved working in small groups, and they loved having “engineering” written on their schedule, along with math and English language arts (ELA). The teachers often weave math and ELA lessons right into the engineering.
Ferguson described how she worked math into the PLTW course. James Nair, an instructional technologist in the district and one of the key implementers of the elementary engineering program, said the modules correlated with the Common Core.
“Literacy and writing are implemented whenever the kids read instructions and do writing about their designs,” Shaw-Tingley said.
Elia said, “Writing skills are critical across all content areas.”
The student engineers are also learning how to collaborate, experiment and even fail at times. Nair said the instructors wanted the children to be comfortable making mistakes.
Fifth-grade teacher Donald Benway agreed, saying that students used to go to their teachers for the answers. Now, especially with PLTW, the teachers turn to the kids and ask leading questions, instead of just giving an easy out.
Student Theo also spoke to that: “You always want to know what you’re going to do next,” he said. “If your project breaks, you take ideas and do something else. It’s just fun. In PLTW, you’re always thinking.”
In teacher Marybeth Goliber’s second-grade class, which the commissioner visited next, the students showed clearly that they were always thinking during their math lesson. The kids performed mental math using a technique called Number Talks. Students demonstrated that they could solve a particular problemby using a multitude of strategies; they communicated how they used those strategies; and they also critiqued the reasoning of others.
Goliber had the students reason out possible answers first and wrote these on the board. Then the kids explained, sometimes so speedily as to dazzle their listeners — as Board of Education President JOANNE Kiernan admitted — how they’d come up with that response. Two students using two different strategies had found 35 to be the answer. Their classmate Elena had gotten 46, however. Goliber had all three walk through their thinking to see if they’d gotten the right answer. After some gently prompted checking, Elena thought through and corrected her response to 35. This student plainly illustrated how today’s teaching strategies follow Theo’s line: “If your project [or equation] breaks, you take ideas and do something else.”
Over in teacher Jessica Poremba’s kindergarten class, the children were putting together idea after idea, with a cheerful disregard for breaking — or in their case, bending. Students were exploring structure and function by identifying products around them designed by engineers, asking questions engineers might ask as they design products, and determining the structure and function of items.
More literally, the kids were building beanstalks out of pipe cleaners, typing together their ELA fairytale reading of “Jack and the Beanstalk” with STEM work on a project that was meant to hold up a golden egg.
“Not a real egg,” explained student Cazia Soleil-Datcher. “It’s a plastic egg. If it was real, all the egg oil would run out of it.”
At Cazia’s table, her classmates Dylan Wright, Teddy Andrews and Nikola Ritopecki all worked on their beanstalks, bending and twisting pipe cleaners into the shape of the drawing they each had done for a design.
“They’re totally engrossed in this,” Elia said as she watched.
The commissioner toured three more classes, seeing third- graders designing, building and testing an experimental model glider to explore forces that affect flight. Another third-grade class explored simple machines such as wheels and axles, levers, the inclined plane and more as they investigated the effects of balanced and unbalanced forces on the motion of an object. And a fifth- grade class expanded its understanding of robotics as it explored mechanical design and computer programming. The focus for this module centered on developing skills needed to build and program those awesome autonomous robots.
Before leaving for her next school visit, Elia reflected on what she would take away from Lake Ave.
“PLTWis a great program that ties in really well with the kinds of activities and higher standards the children need,” she said. “It will be an eye-opener for education administrators outside the state to see what New York can do.”