School Location:
Palm Springs, Florida
Fellows:
Diann Bacchus
Jillian Sargent
School Website:
http://stlukepalmsprings.org/
School Team of the Month - October 2015
Toward what elements of your STEM Impact Plan are you currently working?
We are currently working toward our first Math STEM night. At the end of October, we will be hosting a parent night with a focus on exploring a mini-engineering challenge with a Math emphasis.
What exciting STEM experiences are happening at St. Luke?
Middle school will be launching our after school STEM Club in November. Our club’s main focus is preparing for the local engineering competition held in the Spring. However, this year we will be kicking our Club off with rocket building and launching. Our goal is for students not only to have fun with the building and launching the rocket but to use math skills to determine the altitude of the rocket.
The lower school has a Lego Club starting in November. The club is registered with the Jr First Lego League. The club is focusing on the students discovering real-world math and science concepts. The goal is to join a competition and have the students experience STEM learning outside the school.
In what ways have you been able to engage other members of your school, local community, or other STEM Teaching Fellows?
In the middle school we have been working with the St. Peter team in San Francisco. Ryan Suarez’s 6th grade class and Diann Bacchus’ 6th and 7th grade classes our working on completing the “Ship the Chip” challenge. Each of our classes designed and built containers, which have been used to ship the chips to each other’s school. After the chips have arrived at the other’s school, we plan on having our classroom Skype to discuss the success rate of the chips making the trip.
In the lower grades Jill has been working with the fourth grade teacher to develop a STEM unit for sound. Additionally, she has been working with the lower school teachers as they launch their engineering Project Lead the Way units in their classrooms.
Finally, we gave a professional development to the St. Luke faculty on talk moves. We are working to develop a common campus wide language for classroom discussions.