Laura Bond, Reporter
09-23-2008
Skills to enroll in Ruston High’s advanced science, technology, engineering and math courses are being planted among local sixth graders.I.A. Lewis School has partnered with Lincoln Parish Schools Project ACHIEVE to launch a STEM Seed class at the school this fall, open to students who achieve good grades, high iLEAP exam scores and obtain teacher recommendations.
In this course students rarely take notes, but spent their days engaging in hands-on activities to grasp the concepts taught.
The 23 students in the course have created pendulums out of strings, washers, paper clips and pencils, and later this year they will determine the altitude and landing location of cardboard rockets they launch and be submerged in a barrel of water to determine their bodies’ volume.
“This is about problem solving,” Project ACHIEVE Coordinator Cathi Cox said. “We’re getting away from that cookbook mentality, because life is not laid out like that. They’re building confidence with solving small problems and will work their way up.”
STEM Seed teacher Stacy Campbell said the students were asked to calculate the swing rate of the pendulum and determine what variables— whether it be mass, string length or angle from which it was dropped — affected the number of swings per minute.
Madeline McCullin, 11, explained the experiment.
“All you do is tape a pencil to the desk, tie a string to the polytwine and put washers on the end,” she said. “You measure the degrees you want to drop it at with a protractor, and time it for one minute. You do that four-five times to find out what angle is best to drop it to swing the most.”
Cox said for most of the students, the class gives them their first opportunity to engage in experimental design, which helps promote critical thinking skills.
“At the elementary level, teachers are so burdened with English and math that many times science gets put on the backburner,” Cox said. “It’s critical we start this now if we want them to be prepared for the challenges being offered at the high-school level.”
The first STEM class at RHS — physical science — was launched in fall 2007, and STEM biology, chemistry and robotics courses were added this fall.
Cox said in the next couple of years, STEM physics, engineering and forensics will be available at RHS, and STEM classes will be offered at Ruston Junior High.
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