My Imagine-IT Project is now rolling along as my 6th grade students have brought back their signed parent permission forms in order to bring home one of the new STEM investigation lab kits to experiment with at home with family members. They are now experimenting at home and the next stage is to show them how to upload their reflections in the form of journal entries and World of Wonder presentations to our Google Classroom webpage. Parents are encouraged to post their thoughts and ideas as well along with their child to the discussion board, thus helping to further build community and celebrate learning of STEM as a shared public endeavor!
Other aspects of my project moving forward is I have had and am currently scheduling STEM professionals and college students majoring in STEM to visit our classroom to share their passion for STEM with my students. Just last week, we had several undergrad students majoring in engineering come and share their application of STEM through their Engineers Without Borders Chapter, where they are helping indigenous groups in rural Kenya construct and maintain their own freshwater storage facilities and accessible water pipelines. This project hit home to some of our students who recently immigrated from African countries.
I continue to collaborate with my colleagues and students to plan a big STEM Celebration at the end of this current school year which will include lots of STEM pros from all types of STEM fields coming to explore STEM with our students and parents on a Saturday!