Allison Park Elementary introduces new STEAM classroom
Courtesy Chartiers-Houston School District
Allison Park Elementary School recently unveiled its new STEAM classroom.
Karen Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Allison Park Elementary School STEAM teacher Katie Magyar shows a project completed by second-graders who read the book “The Rainbow Fish” and then built a fish that lights up. The school opened a STEAM classroom at the start of the school year.
Karen Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
A Blue-Bot robot and map that elementary students at Allison Park Elementary School use in their STEAM classroom. The clear robot, which allows students to see the hardware inside, has Bluetooth capability and helps students learn{span} coding and other skills.{/span}
Karen Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Kindergarten students at Allison Park Elementary School learn coding in STEAM class by creating a race track that the car follows from the starting line to the finish line. Each color represents a command (left, right, slow, stop), and the children learn basic coding while completing a fun project.
It’s full STEAM ahead for students at Allison Park Elementary School, where a new STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and music) lab was launched at the beginning of the school year.
After months of planning and renovation, Chartiers-Houston School District unveiled the STEAM classroom to the public during an open house Monday that included displays and demonstrations set up in the lab and in the hallway.
The lab, where students will have a place of their own to explore 21st century learning skills, is housed in a former computer lab at the school.
“I’m excited, the kids are excited. It’s going to lead to a lot of memorable, lasting educational experiences,” said Katie Magyar, STEAM teacher. “It’s giving them the opportunity to direct their own learning with incorporating some skills they’ve never had before, maybe robots, electrical work, which we’ve been doing a lot, green screens, combining it all with what they’re learning in classes and putting it all together to make something meaningful.”
Chartiers-Houston School District Superintendent Dr. Gary Peiffer said the STEAM classroom will provide elementary students with cross-curricular opportunities that they can build on in grades 7-12.
“It will give our kids opportunities to integrate technology, to work with programming, to work with some robotics skills and build that base of technology skill sets that can be applied across all subject areas,” said Peiffer.
Magyar rotated through a few stations, including a couple involving small robots to teach kids basic coding skills. For example, students in kindergarten and first grade learned to program Bee-Bots to travel from one place to another on a map.
In another activity, second-graders read the book “The Rainbow Fish” in the library, decorated a fish in art class, and then culminated the project in STEAM class, where they wired the fish so that it lights up.
“This really sums up the STEAM mentality. We took a story that they listened to and incorporated it across the classrooms,” said Magyar.
The STEAM lab was funded through ESSER funds, and grants and donations from businesses and organizations including Range Resources, Consol Energy, Titan Robots, and the Benedum Foundation to purchase technology and materials.
The colorful STEAM room is filled with gadgets, tools, circuits, construction materials, a 3D laser printer, and other items students can use to help them think critically about how to solve problems.
With the Glowforge 3D laster printer, fifth-graders made a word web that described them and etched the words into a tile that will be treated and made into a mosaic installation.
Peiffer said the STEAM activities the elementary students are doing are “right in line for this generation” and that the district plans to expand STEAM learning to the junior/senior high school.
Said Peiffer, “So they’re actually doing higher-level thinking skills and employing different skill sets that are going to help them be successful at a much younger age, and that’s why this program is so important, not just for them, but for the region.”