This summer, the Riverview Junior Senior High School Library was transformed into the new Riverview Media Center. The physical changes to the space included a new STEAM Workshop and clearly defined spaces for learning, books, and technology. Along with the physical changes, there is an instructional shift occurring in our junior high. Assistant Principal, Eric Hewitt and Librarian, Lynn Madden were awarded a $20,000 STEAM Grant from the Allegheny Intermediate Unit’s Center for Creativity. With this grant, students in seventh and eighth grade are participating in Steam Across the Curriculum, a new two-day per week program with four distinct mini-courses:
- Gaming with MaKey MaKey
- Culture Through Bots with Hummingbird
- Engineering with K’NEX
- Video Production with iPads
Each quarter, students take a different class, thus completing the curriculum by the year’s end. In Gaming with MaKey MaKey, students are harnessing their creativity and ingenuity by designing a new way to interact with online content using fruit, water, dough, foil, and other conductive materials. This quarter, they are also learning more about circuits with littleBits, an engaging product that allows users to create their own circuit. These kits were borrowed from the Allegheny Intermediate Unit’s STEAM Lending Library, funded by the Pittsburgh Penguins Foundation. During Culture Through Bots with Hummingbird, students spend part of the quarter learning about French and Spanish culture. Then, they study a country and use art to create a three-dimensional piece representing their country that they program to light up, move, and interact with a user. Students animated a bull, a sombrero, the Eiffel Tower, and even a hockey rink! In Engineering with K’NEX, students study the engineering process by determining the steps needed in taking a project from inception through completion. Students need to determine what parts of the project can be done in parallel and what parts need to be done sequentially. After completing their bridge, the teams create presentations describing the process used to build the bridge and the engineering used to design it. Finally, in the Video Production class, students are using iPads to create iMovies of the work being done in each of the other STEAM classes. Some students created documentaries, while others created drama filled segments highlighting the learning occurring in the other classes. It is exciting to watch the junior high students grow as they continue to study STEAM Across the Curriculum. Planning has already begun for year two of the course, when students in eighth grade will select the focus of their STEAM studies. As STEAM excitement grows in the junior high, teachers of math, history, and family and consumer sciences in the high school are developing ideas on how they can utilize the new space in the Media Center and bring STEAM into their curriculum.
