STEM Parent Newsletter
March 2019
Parent Information
"You Think You Know YouTube?" Article
Many parents are now worrying about their kids watching YouTube videos with some of the recent scares. While students do have access to YouTube at school, they are not supposed to be searching or viewing YouTube videos except for educational purposes and under the direction and supervision of a teacher. Common Sense Media has created a Parent's Ultimate Guide to YouTube to provide guidance and support for parents. You can also sign up as a parent to receive emails from Common Sense Media of a variety of media related topics.
Teacher Spotlight
STEM Tiles by Amanda Daley
KINDERGARTEN
Designing Trash Collectors, continued
Kindergarten classes continued to visit the STEM Lab this month to practice using the engineering design process by engineering a trash collector that removes trash from a model pond without removing too much water. Students did an excellent job with asking questions, imagining some designs, and then creating, testing, and improving their trash collector to make it work better.
FIRST GRADE
March Themed STEM Challenges
Freckle in First Grade
SECOND GRADE
Lucky Leprechaun Breakout
THIRD GRADE
Designing Water Filters
3rd graders are becoming environmental engineers and working on designing water filters to clean “contaminated” water. We are learning that a good design meets all of the criteria for solving a problem-in this case, speedy filtration, removal of particles and color, and low cost. Students are working in teams and using materials such as sand and gravel, cheesecloth, cotton balls, coffee filters and screens to create their filters.
FOURTH GRADE
Geotechnical Engineering
FIFTH GRADE
Digital Portfolios
STEM Twitter Accounts
- Ms. Dozier: @stemrootelem
- Mr. Peterson: @RootITF