Second graders build skills with science

Ronan second-grade teacher Alina Graves shared a unique science experiment with her K. William Harvey students this year: Graves’ class tested out a new STEM-related science program that uses kids’ inventive thinking skills to solve a relatable real world problem.

The program took place in two 10-hour learning units this school year.

During their first learning module, students were asked to invent a “seed spreader” that would plant a large number of seeds in a big field, in a short amount of time.

Kids were split into small groups so each participant in the class could express themselves and be involved in the process.

“They were super excited right from the beginning. I stressed that they would be the ‘engineers’ and ‘scientists’ and then once the problem had been stated just let them go with it,” Graves said.

Once students saw the need, they jumped at the answer. The project turned out to be so relatable to students that finding a solution was not much of a challenge, Graves said.

But the process of working together, first drawing and thinking out their own design, then taking all the best components of their own design and collectively creating a single solution taught students skills they will use throughout their lives.

“One thing that was interesting was some of the kids who excel the rest of the time in all areas struggled with the creative collaboration part,” Graves said. “They wanted to use their own design model and had trouble envisioning a model that wasn’t entirely their own. It was neat to see kids who maybe aren’t traditionally ‘good’ students able to stand out because they were better at working in a group and sharing ideas.”

Graves said she was also impressed with students’ ability to focus.

“The entire time we were working on these projects I had no behavior issues,” Graves said. “Every student was on task, right up until it was time to clean up, at which point they were always disappointed to have to move on to something else.” 

The class’ second project was a bit more scientifically demanding.

The second project was a “landslide prevention” system students collaboratively designed and created to prevent a landslide on a simulated hillside where a flash flood was expected to occur. 

“This was more challenging than the first project because they had never really been asked to do anything like this before,” she said. “But by the time we did the second project they were pros.”

Once students were done crafting their land models, they got to test their theories with real water and a simulated landslide event.

Graves said that to watch her students learn and grow was fantastic.

“Watching them test their models and then discuss what was effective and what was not effective really stood out,” Graves said. “I saw kids who hardly talk at all verbalizing what was happening in their experiment with vocabulary I didn’t know they had. It challenged all of them to think about things in a way they hadn’t before, at least not related to school activities. I think kids do this stuff all the time when they’re playing, this was just a way of bringing ‘play’ into the classroom as science.”

When the Graves’ class completed their two 10-hour science-based sessions, they were able to give feedback to the school’s administration that would help set the Ronan School District up to take advantage of STEM-related learning in the future.

STEM, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics is an education teaching mindset that helps improve students’ future workforce competitiveness in science and technology development.

Ronan School District already employs a strong technology-related curriculum in its schools, but is now thinking about how it can improve its engineering and design district-wide curriculum said Christina Barbachano, Ronan School District Curriculum, Grants, and Federal Programs director.

The district will be custom-designing their STEM science system and implementing it district-wide over the next several years, she said.