Southside students power forward with STEAM

COCOLALLA — Creating the Leaning Tower of Pisa out of Legos is quite the conundrum.

"It just fell over," said Southside third-grader, Jace Foubert, when another student asked why the tower wasn't leaning.

Jace actually built the Eiffel Tower for his project, and presenting with him on the Lego project was kindergartner Teague Carlin, who built the Notre Dame Cathedral. The kids had seven challenges in the STEAM Lego Exploration program, which included building towers, animals, cars and more.  

In the next room, the STEAM group had their choice of what they wanted to create. Fifth-grader Kaiden Harper created a game on his tablet called "The Slime Cloner" by using a coding app called "Tynker." And in another room, students had learned about and designed aid drop packages.

"It's important to have a drop package because we learned about this place that was in the middle of an earthquake and the Army needed to drop down food and water, so everyone could last a couple days until they get more help," said second-grader Timothy Jones.

These were just a few of the nine exhibits at Southside's STEAM Exhibition Day Thursday, where the kids displayed, described and demonstrated projects they worked on throughout the trimester. The kids were split up into nine groups of around 10 kids of different grade levels, and each group had at least one kid who worked on each of the projects. As they rotated through, every student got a chance to present.

Another exhibit was "Marvelous Machines," which included the creation of simple machines like pulleys, lever, wheel and axle, and inclined plane. The "Taking the Plunge" group designed submersibles while exploring sounding poles and ocean maps. Students in the "Lights, Camera, Action" group put together a short theatrical show exploring costume and set design, music and directing, while another group explored bubble behavior and materials, creating their own bubble-makers. The green engineering group created race cars made from recycled materials, and the "How Does Your Garden Grow?" group planned and planted, learned about bees and made garden decorations.

STEAM includes science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics. Southside principal Jacquelyn Johnson said STEM has been popular for quite awhile. With the addition of the arts, she said the Southside staff is "embracing the A" with an "awesome" music teacher and art teacher.

Southside staff got together, she said, to determine what the STEAM program is doing for the students. First of all, Johnson said, the program is creating relationships across grade levels.

"We see those relationships on the playground," Johnson said. "And we notice that even kindergartners are becoming presenters. Everybody is becoming more and more comfortable with doing their presentations."

All of the students know the engineering design process as well, Johnson said, which is giving them and "improvement mindset," which is carrying over into other subjects. The design process includes the steps: ask, imagine, plan, create and improve. The steps are listed in a circle for repetition, so if something doesn't work, or even if it does, the students are constantly looking at how it can be improved.

Kids are also getting exposed to content and ideas they would not experience in a regular curriculum, Johnson said.

"It's a lot of hands-on learning, so it provides an opportunity for kids who need that hands-on," Johnson said.

Mary Malone can be reached by email at mmalone@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow her on Twitter @MaryDailyBee.