So, I'm a little delayed in posting this. December was a whirlwind of activity, and although I had great intentions of filling my break with blog posts and planning, instead I chose to spend my days with warm cups of coffee and snuggles.
With that said, Angela and I are excited to announce that just before the winter break our students finished their first collaborative STEM project using Defined STEM. I introduced this project in a previous blog post, and wanted to share an update! Our students worked so hard over the last 2 weeks! All of the groups WOWED us with their creativity, collaboration, and ability to come to consensus.
After our students planned their conceptual models and built the physical models of each instrument, they were ready to advertise for the concert AND perform! They worked together to create a billboard and a performance, that they then recorded and edited. Once all recordings were finished, we uploaded the videos to iMovie and the groups edited their movies and finalized them for our class playlist. All members of the group had to play an active role in the video- they could sing, play an instrument, record, and/or edit the movie. Watching the smiles on their faces during their final performances was the best part of the entire project. It made up for duct tape stuck to the couches, cardboard scraps found in EVERY nook and cranny of the room, and junk, I mean supplies, strewn from one end of our space to another...we are still finding rubber bands and string :)
Our classroom was filled with enthusiasm and excitement (and a whole lot of tape!) whenever they looked at the journey and realized it was science time! With our collaboration day with Michael Mohammad looming, we were cutting it close, but all of the groups stuck to the timeline and finished on time. The students of TEAM Togetherness were thrilled to share their instruments AND their finished videos with their high school mentors. It pays to have a real audience!
We are SO proud of these kids and are already knee deep in the planning of our next STEM project! Hopefully it won't take me so long to post :)
~ Kate
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