Phase two of my ImagineIT Building Community with the school has been a rejuvenating experience with getting to know my colleagues and their students. Helping my students collaborate with other students outside their classroom and building their leadership skills has been a great learning experience. When we returned from winter break we completed our first building community project with third graders and kindergarteners after working on it for a few weeks. Team 302 and third grade created math division problems and shared them on google slides. Team 304 and kindergartners created math love bugs with math equations that equaled 5.
It’s now time to spring forward into phase 3 of my ImagineIT project. I look forward to this project growing outside the school and helping my students to get know community stakeholders. I have confirmed with several that are willing to participate in the first phase, a Google Hangout introducing themselves and how science, technology, engineering, or math is related to their jobs. This will take place mid February and the beginning of March. I hope that this phase is a success because it’s important for students to make connection to STEM in the real world.
The second phase is to invite stakeholders during school hours to work on a STEM activity with the students and another time after school hours for a family event to work with students on a STEM activity with their families. This take planning time because I need to set dates, finalize both activities, and purchase the supplies. I hope that the members of my STEM club that are not my classroom students will participate in the after school events. It will be totally awesome if the the third graders and kindergarteners participate. My wildest dreams would be for this project to be implemented schoolwide, receive funding to continue with projects, and continue networking to offer students more experiences beyond their communities.