{"id":6840,"date":"2017-07-16T15:58:58","date_gmt":"2017-07-16T19:58:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/?p=6840"},"modified":"2017-07-19T17:14:52","modified_gmt":"2017-07-19T21:14:52","slug":"title-stem-camps-make-school-career-connections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/title-stem-camps-make-school-career-connections\/","title":{"rendered":"Title I STEM camps make school-to-career connections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ask Ariana Trevino what she wants to be when she grows up and the rising Parkway Elementary School fifth-grade student not only knows what career she aspires to purse, but why.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to be an engineer because I like making stuff with my creativity,\u201d she says as she sets down a soldering iron she was using to weld together pieces of a circuit board.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Next door in the classroom designated as \u201cCoding\u201d by a paper sign posted on the entryway, rising Rosemont Elementary School fifth-grade student Sandiah Hobert was busily programming a Dash robot to play a xylophone to the tune \u201cTwinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.\u201d While scrolling through the musical bars on her iPad that control Dash\u2019s movement, she said that she, too, wants to be an engineer.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Trevino and Hobert are amongst the hundreds of students attending the school division\u2019s annual summer Title I Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) camps occurring in July at Lynnhaven Elementary School. Each of the three weekly camps is filled with a different group of 100 rising fourth- and fifth-grade students from Title I schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want this to be so fun and engaging, but we also want to have learning targets tied to our curriculum so we are reinforcing what they learned in school but in a way that sparks something in them,\u201d said Sheila Cooper, Title I instructional specialist who is one of the educators that started the camps five years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really impressed with the quality lessons that teachers bring,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cWe set up what the classes are going to be and then teachers sit together, look at the curriculum and enhance it with their own experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of those experiences, for example, was adding music capabilities to Dash through a xylophone attachment since music teachers are partaking in the camp for the first time this year.<\/p>\n

Cooper said that they infuse many other objectives into the engineering, robotics and coding classes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cFor instance, yesterday they studied the life cycle of a frog and built a robotic Lego tadpole version,\u201d said Cooper. \u201cToday they will modify the tadpole into a frog robot version.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why was engineering so popular that day?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen students arrive in the morning, they first have breakfast during which time we have a morning meeting based on a topic that relates to the focus of STEM camp for the day,\u201d said Great Neck Middle School Instructional Technology Specialist Shawn Krisch, another one of the educators who was part of the camps\u2019 inception.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis morning while the students were eating their breakfast, we asked them about their favorite part of yesterday\u2019s engineering activity along with providing an overview of different types of engineering careers, such environmental engineer, structural engineer or aerospace engineer,\u201d Krisch added.<\/p>\n

In addition to the exposure to careers, teacher Chad Huff said that nearly everything is a hands-on activity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just direct instruction of teachers telling them something and then they\u2019re expected to retain it,\u201d said Huff, who teaches at Birdneck Elementary School. \u201cThey are getting to apply a lot of the knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Huff points to the floor in the center of the room where Hobert is working on her Dash robot.<\/p>\n

She is in one of four groups surrounded by strips of blue tape that resemble various geometric shapes on the floor.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of measurement as far as having to measure the lines that they are building and time it takes [Dash] to travel along the entire shape,\u201d Huff said. \u201cWe are trying to embed a lot of those third-, fourth- and fifth-grade objectives because that\u2019s the age range that we\u2019re working with so we\u2019re making that connection with \u2018oh, I did that in class last year but it\u2019s a completely different environment than my classroom setting.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In that same classroom where Hobert was programming her Dash robot, six students sitting at one large table were carefully sketching with black markers what, at first glance, appear to be giant doodles.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a roller coaster,\u201d explained Bettie F. Williams rising fifth-grade student Jay\u2019vion Moore.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Ozobot knows where to turn by traveling along the black marker by itself,\u201d Moore added while he pointed to his programming handout that designated green and red colors for other commands.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it hits a certain color it does something else.\u201d<\/p>\n

He, too, wants to be an engineer.<\/p>\n

The third station in that \u201ccoding\u201d room was a row of students working on iPads.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are coding using very basic apps but it really introduces them to complex concepts that coders use,\u201d Huff said. \u201cOne of the things that they can recognize, because they spend so much time on computers and play video games, is that when a random object starts moving in the background, it just didn\u2019t start moving by itself. Someone had to program that item to continuously move. Experiencing coding makes a really good connection for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Huff and Cooper separately mentioned that making connections to what they are learning during the regular school year is one of the objectives of the summer camp.<\/p>\n

One of the other connections is how their activities in camp can be used in future careers, something which is shared with parents.<\/p>\n

On the final day of the camp, parents are invited to camp for what is called \u201cChallenge Day.\u201d On this day, students pick their favorite station and work on a project which they showcase to their parents in the afternoon. While parents are there, camp organizers and teachers take the opportunity to share what families can do in elementary and middle school to help prepare students for the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cVirginia Beach [City Public Schools] offers a lot of opportunities,\u201d Cooper stated. \u201cWe have the Advanced Technology Center, the Technical and Career Education Center and many academy programs, but we tell them that if they want your children go to those programs, here is what you have do in elementary and middle schools to make room in their schedules to attend those programs.\u201d<\/p>\n

She goes on to say that they let them know what the process is and encourage them to connect with guidance counselors who can help them get there. They also share activities occurring at the elementary school level, such as the STEM Trifecta program.<\/p>\n

Before they depart, students and their parents are treated to one grand finale activity, seeing staff from the Virginia Air and Space Center make ice cream using liquid nitrogen.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have many partners who make this camp happen\u2014Food Services, Transportation, Department of Technology, Teaching and Learning, Lynnhaven Elementary School and student volunteers from every one of the division\u2019s high schools.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooper says that they will continue to refine the camp every year to make it even better, but the one thing that she hopes is that camp is just the beginning.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want it to end at camp,\u201d Cooper said \u201cWe want it spark something that helps them get that interest into something at school, especially with our underrepresented students in those careers. We want them to realize that they can do it and get them on that path.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ask Ariana Trevino what she wants to be when she grows up and the rising Parkway Elementary School fifth-grade student not only knows what career she aspires to purse, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":6841,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[179,21],"class_list":["post-6840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-connections","tag-lynnhaven-elementary","tag-stem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6840"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6859,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6840\/revisions\/6859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}