Kelsey Magaña
Welcome to S.T.E.A.M. Club!
Halloween Candy Mystery
Why this Artifact?
One of our first S.T.E.A.M. Club meetings took place during Halloween time. Student leaders selected a familiar lesson from Mystery Science to help facilitate a discussion about candy with the First Graders! This lesson connects to our district goal of implementing inquiry-based learning though discussion. We had so much fun planning and leading together in costume! During this time, S.T.E.A.M. Club was only open to First Grade but its popularity quickly grew! When we had this smaller group, we used to rename ourselves based on the theme of the day. We were all getting to know each other and test what was manageable on Zoom! I chose this artifact because it shows a time when we were still experimenting with what S.T.E.A.M. Club. We were not making investigations from scratch together at this time. We were building community, and establishing club norms. Our goal of creating a safe and fun space to discuss science was a big success! We were motivated to keep going!
We all need to start somewhere!
Elementary school science teachers are often trying to teach and plan for many subjects at the same time. Mystery Science is a great resource for stand alone mini-lessons with little to no prep! Although we do not want to depend on these all of the time, they come in handy when helping train student leaders on how to pace an investigation, and the type of age appropriate language we should use!
