STEAM rises from Sedgefield Elementary students' brains on activity days
Posted: March 14, 2022
Newport News Public Schools enjoy a robust emphasis on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics), an interdisciplinary, hands-on approach that appeals to all students. Every school has a lead teacher who cheerleads the program and assists colleagues in planning inclusive, active and fun lessons that incorporate concepts from every subject to solve real-world problems in creative ways.
When the school calendar includes a half-day, students at Sedgefield Elementary know that means a STEAM Day. Dee'Jean Mendez, the school's STEAM lead teacher, reports that attendance, which used to be a concern on half days, is now much higher because students don't want to miss the fun lessons.
On a recent visit, students in kindergarten learned about polar bears and Matthew Henson, the African American North Pole explorer, before they used toothpicks and marshmallows to build shelters for the bears.
Down the hall, third graders made simple machines and demonstrated their models for the class, while fourth graders researched African American spies, including Josephine Baker and James Lafayette, before they created 3D models of tools to assist their research subject's spycraft.
Ms. Mendez led her fifth-grade class through a lesson on African American quilt block designs and the messages the geometric shapes could convey before they moved to the gym to apply that geometry to creating mazes for robotic balls to navigate with controls from the students' iPads.
As a result of these innovative lessons, students enjoy learning that is connected, creative and fun, leading many to feel more confident about studying math and science in the future.
