Elon Teacher Education students co-lead a week-long STEM enrichment program at a local elementary school during the school system's spring break.
Last week, seven #ElonEd teacher education students co-led a free STEM enrichment program for children at South Graham Elementary school during the Alamance Burlington School System’s Spring Break.
The #ElonEd students who taught were Colleen Cody, Marlies Emmelot, Danielle Marzullo, Emma Mustacio, Kristen O’Neill, Emma Pippert and Allie Wrin. The program was a project in Associate Professor Mark Enfield’s Principles of Learning and Teaching Course.
The program involved the teacher education students in analyzing and interpreting the Engineering is Elementary curriculum kit, A long way down: Designing Parachutes, which was purchased through a CATL teaching and learning grant.
The teacher education students formed a professional learning community that co-planned a week-long, half-day program based on the curriculum kits.
Finally, the team co-taught the program to approximately 30 children in kindergarten through fifth grade. Throughout the week students learned about air as matter, how air creates drag, components of parachutes, and the designed, built, tested, and refined (using the Engineering Design Process) their own parachutes.
Students said:
- I liked that we got to see Felix Baumgartner breaking the sound barrier jumping through space (4th grader).
- That we get to create our own parachutes and that we get to learn about parachutes. It is fun that we get to learn about science and math in it too (3rd grader).
- I liked that we get to bring home pinwheels and parachute toys because we can do things with them at home (2nd grader).
- It was fun to drop parachutes outside (1st grader).
- Going outside and running to feel the wind slow me down with the parachute on (Kindergartener).
Happy, smiling faces along with laughter and multiple requests to know when our next STEM program would be offered anecdotal evidence of program success. Hearing students use terms and apply that knowledge to design their own parachutes provided informal evidence that they learned about engineering design, how parachutes work, basic ideas about air as matter and how air is a fluid that can create resistance.
For Enfield, seeing excellent teaching from seven rising star teachers made all the effort worthwhile.