 And again, we welcome you to STEM Evolution. We have three amazing teachers here today with us. The first is Julie. Julie is a first grade teacher. She sees every learner as an individual. She teaches in a classroom that is flexible and encourages flexible thinking. Her attention to design both supports the learning of students in her room and colleagues in her school. And we have Christy. Christy is a first through fifth grade science teacher. She enjoys engaging with students in the process of discovery through science. She strives to keep kids curious and gives them opportunities to explore, think, and be creative, to provide a space where students can be successful, fail, and try again, to help young scientists build the skills that will allow them to observe carefully, organize, and explain clearly and analyze thoughtfully to help make sense of it all. And Michael. Michael is here and designs experiences where inquiry-based, experiential, and collaborative learning encourages thinkers to look closely, think deeply, and wonder incessantly. These experiences build a culture where thinking is valued, visible, and actively promoted as part of the daily experiences of all learners. So as you are aware, we are in amazing hands today and I am so excited to turn it over to this great team to share their work. So welcome, everyone. Thank you. Man, we're happy to be here. We want to kind of frame everything that we're gonna talk about today through a lens of product versus process. We do wanna say that we have both in our school. We rely heavily on the process but we do have something that we ask the learners to have a kind of a tangible artifact of learning. That's where CSaw comes in, both in the process side and also the product side. So when we're thinking about the process, we have a feedback loop that has been really valuable for teachers and our learners here to where the posts that we make aren't a static post. We don't post once and it gets shipped off and then we forget about that post and continue on. You'll hear from the teachers later too about how they use that as a continuous feedback loop and it encourages iteration. So we have many examples of how divergence supports the thinking that we do here and we do have products at the end of our units of study, something tangible that will show growth over time and skill development and demonstration of that skill. It does get turned in and we try as hard as we can to have it connect to what we have just learned and then connect it to what we are going to continue learning. So we do focus heavily on the process and that's something we'd like to invite you into our experience. A day in a life at Ligget, there are so many amazing things happening. Learners are constantly using manipulatives, creating examples of their learning through making things, through designing things, through creating in the virtual world and sharing with friends and getting feedback and it's a constant cycle of having an idea, creating something and designing it, sharing it and getting feedback, creating it again and testing everything you do. And it's not just in our science classes, it's in every subject area. And today we'd like to talk about how the idea of STEAM has evolved from these experiences that happen in silos and have embraced the things that we do here in our everyday project at school. So in this picture, you can see one of my students, I know everybody's done paper tower challenges and that kind of thing with STEM before, but using that as an inspiration, I kick off the year with a little bit of a study with birds and the kids pick bird names and it's just kind of a fun way to get everybody comfortable and kick off the year. So this year, after we introduced birds, they kind of made the tower project into a STEAM project where the kids had just 30 centimeters of tape and a piece of paper and had to try to create a perch that was freestanding for their little birds in the classroom and you can see there, I made one that was just out of rolling one sheet of paper and then the kids had to try to beat mine and you can see the picture there if he has one that's quite a bit shorter than the other, that was their first iteration. Then we talked about ideas with their team about what could make it taller and they came up with a second iteration which you can see is quite a bit taller. He posted showing the improvement that they made and why he thought that they had been able to make that improvement. So they're thinking about the engineering and then not just doing it one time but then repeating that process and then sharing it out to the families and friends and talking about that teamwork and what they had to change in order to make it better. And I think that was like the important part of that process was having that second step where the kids actually improve and reflect on that improvement. In this slide you can see they did a little experiment with evaporation and the students each had three different bags with cold water, warm room temperature water and then hot water. And they were taking pictures every so often so that they could try to see the process of evaporation and which one would evaporate first. So they made predictions, they took pictures to provide evidence of their experimentation and then tried to organize that information and being able to take something, organize it and put it out there and then use that to help explain your conclusions is a big part of what we try to do with the kids in science. So they did those, this is the four students are each from a different group, they each showed their part and then as a team, they came up with the conclusion in the middle and we're able to see how hot water evaporated quicker. So just another opportunity for the kids to look at the process of what was happening to take it, organize it and then be able to use that information to come to some sort of a conclusion. You know what I found really interesting about this one is the app smashing involved in creating this post. Each group worked independently and documented their process through the photo app on the iPad and created a pic collage. And then those groups got together and compared pic collages and then put four pic collages into one, synthesizing their experience together and then coming up with one statement that said here's something that unites us all and then that's what they chose to post on Seesaw. So it's just really interesting in the ways that the kids are becoming more flexible in choosing the tools that will allow them to express their ideas the best way they want to share them. Okay, this is one of probably my favorite project my students have done so far this year. My class became obsessed with puzzles and there was a puzzle on our back table every single week and they would come in or any time they had some downtime and they would work on the puzzle. So it became an inquiry project for them and we put a couple images, different puzzles on the board and kind of talked about, noticed the shape of some of the puzzles, noticed colors in puzzles, noticed how the puzzles fit together and we decided after looking at a bunch of puzzles why don't we make our own puzzles? So as you can see in the upper left corner it's one of my students drawing out his design and his puzzle so all students got to make whatever they wanted for their puzzle. On the bottom it's actually putting it onto then a piece of wood and coloring it in the middle you can see what it looked like before we cut it. On the glow forge we were able to then put the puzzle into the glow forge and you can see him in the bottom right corner that the puzzle was cut into puzzle pieces and then they were very excited to kind of take the puzzle apart and put it back together and take it all for their families for them to figure out as well but we were able to share this entire process on CISA with their families and friends so that they can see the entire process that we went through in order to create our own puzzles. One thing I really loved about this project too is it went, it didn't quite go into the use of technology right away. We did support the kids thinking in explaining how they approach doing puzzles and really thought about the individual ways learners in Julie's classroom approached a puzzle and some kids looked at the shapes and some kids looked at the colors and some kids wanted to group it by like colors or like shapes and we had a big discussion on is there one way to do it? Is there a best way to do it? To think about the process of that went through a thinking routine called the explanation game where we put up a really intricate puzzle on the board and thought about the first graders came up with an explanation of what it was and actually the image we chose to put up was the Glowforge cutting a very intricate Amazon jungle puzzle where the puzzle pieces didn't look like your standard jigsaw puzzle. They took on the shape of the trees and the roots and the grasses around it. So it was a little bit different from what they were used to but they were using their previous knowledge to all collectively explain what they were seeing on the screen to get a better understanding of what they were about to do. As you can see, they had a blast. It was for them to be so into the puzzles that we were bringing into the classroom and then for them to have an art of like a puzzle that they made themselves was a really great experience and the technology didn't stand in the way. The art just enhanced it. It was a really great experience from a kind of conceptual to the artifact was really fantastic. In this slide you're looking at just kind of an example of an engineering design process project that the students did. They've been studying about what things sink and float and so I gave them each just a ball of clay and asked them to set it in the water and see if it would sink or float and a lot of them predicted that it would sink and then they were right but then we had to do something with that thinking and see is there a way we could make it float and so the kids imagined several different ideas you can see in step two. She tried several shapes and then once she had a chance to try a few she realized none of those things were working so she had to think a little bit more about what could make it work and she came up with an idea that finally did so here she is with her process. Hi and I'm a scientist and how I made mine float or sink is my first one. This feels like it looked like a log and it did not float it sink and I did my second one. I put it kind of like the edges into a curve kind of and it did not float it sink and I put it kind of like into a square and then it did not float again and then I feel like in a ball and it did not sink and then I put it kind of like in a canoe shape and it float in and I got seven pennies and then I got another one and I had three pennies and then my highest score was when I made it kind of like a cup shape and I got 12 pennies in my head. And so you can really see Madison's thinking and her process as she went through and we tried to put together a flow chart that would help encourage that kind of thinking where the kids create something and try again, do a test and share it out and reflect on it and then go back through the process again. So it was a pretty successful first attempt at a flow chart like this with second graders and I felt like they did a really good job. This was right at the beginning of the year. So it was just fun to see her shapes and thinking change as she went through the process. I wanna give Kristi a big shout out here cause she won't give one to herself but I think that's well deserved. This visual was created from an idea that came from the class but we didn't have a visual that matched the thinking that the kids were doing in the classroom. So she brainstormed a couple of different ideas, tried a couple out in the class until they found one that really worked, made a template, put it in Seesaw as a activity and the kids were able to start with the same template and really just fill in their own thinking but follow the thought process of did it work? Yes, go on to the next. If not, go back and redesign and thinking about what kind of scaffolds can we put in place for learners in second grade to find meaning in the design thinking process? This was a great way to do that. Yeah, it worked really well. I was really happy with how it turned out. This was actually my first Seesaw activity ever. So this was a big deal. All right. This is an example of my students are very interested in coding and they thought the only coding is just code spark. It is nothing else. And so what we did is we brainstormed some questions about coding and what exactly it was to them. They thought it was just an app and then I thought that's what they had to do in order to code. So actually the first part of it was they were assigned partners and I incorporated our daily fiber routine with one of our cafe strategies. They first were reading to someone which was a big deal in first grade because of course we're usually reading to self but we chose to read to someone which is a big deal. And then they had to use the cafe strategy of comprehension in order to summarize their texts. So they had to pick out the main ideas from the story. And as you can see on the large white piece of paper they were picking the three or four main ideas of the story and illustrating them. And then they coded, they were able to write the code to code dash to go to the events of the story and the order that it took place. And then they also retold the story once it got to that main event. And it was just a very cool project for them to see and kind of get through the whole process of it. So I think we have a video to show you a clip of what one of the groups did. And press go. This one. Let me see the code. They have to get far in the back. Get far in the back. This was really great. The ways in which the learners approached the story was through the pictures, which then told the story and bringing the arts into them, creating their story map was really fantastic because the more detail they put into the pictures the more detail they were able to put into the story retails. And this particular group, this was a bit of a differentiation for this group because they were able to finish the actual coding for the, well, we asked for three main parts. This group did four main parts. After the four main parts, they were able to go and help other kids with some of their coding challenges. But when they came back, they had Dash, when he came to a certain spot in the book, change the colors of the robot to match the colors of the pages of the book. They were able to have Dash change speed throughout the map to show the blast off of the rocket when they said five, four, three, two, one, Dash got faster. So that there are so many entry points into a project like this that every learner can have a low floor and a high ceiling and really enter a project like this where they are is really fantastic. This is another, an example of math with using CISA and one of our students showing like fractions. So he's sharing their process of the like fractions and this was able let us as teachers able to give feedback. What I did here was I'm adding four zones for six, seven. So I colored in the four with the purple and then the six with the pink. So there was, it filled up so one hole and then there's three, sevens left. So in the right side, he pulls one and three, sevens. Not really a good seven. One and three, sevens. And I'm gonna say it as a way of knowing there's some post-paragraphic and the answer is definitely three with that four is self-improvement or you can't take any of your seven except for self-improvement. So. So this is just a way that our teachers have taken some of the analog whiteboards that they use in their classroom for a quick kind of check for understanding and then overlay the drawing feature in CISA as a way to bring that whole kind of formative assessment together. They watch the videos, they get some feedback and then they're able to drive instruction for the next day. So in fifth grade, my students study a scientific method and we started with just an observational activity where the kids built a little thing out of connects and they took together some data, made some observations and then that kind of inspired our thinking for the larger project. And so the spring racer you see in the center the kids were putting together a display board, something everybody I'm sure has done from time to time. It's a great way to show the process of scientific method but what I thought was really cool is the way this group decided to add the artistic background and kind of walk you through their steps using that creativity as well. And then the final one, you can see they've made graphs using and create a graph online and then they were able to post those graphs into CISA and that's where I was able to have them really analyze and explain the results that they were seeing and talk more about their individual conclusions from the project. So nice way to bring art and science and technology all together. A final slide here is relating to a project where the kids were studying simple machines and you can see one of the girls really got into the artistic element of hers glitter and paint making an inclined plane for a security squirrel to get back up in his tree. And then another group decided to make a lever. They worked several iterations with different materials to try to get that lever stiff enough so that when they hit one side, he would go flying up. And then there was one other group that got really creative and this last slide, you can see another iteration. Yeah, one thing I want to add too is that scaredy squirrel is a classroom favorite in first grade. And so thinking about the empathy of starting the design process and really thinking about well, what is the problem scaredy squirrel is having and then how can we create that solution with our understanding of simple machines that really help drive this project. And one of the groups really wanted to make an elevator. So we met for a bit to talk about what kinds of materials we would need. They decided that they wanted their elevator to have a working up and down mechanism. So we used an bird brain technology hummingbird Arduino and a motor and they were able to wrap a string around this motor and use their understanding of positive and negative numbers to make the elevator go up and down. So this is just a quick example of what that looked like. So this is them working on the positive and negative numbers. It's a Bluetooth connection to the keyboard or to the iPad and the Arduino. This is the motor working and they had to engineer that support you saw for the string in order for it to go straight up and down. I thought it was a really interesting design for the first graders. The scaredy squirrel getting the healthy needs. Well, thanks everybody for listening and I hope you enjoyed some of the projects. It's really fun to work with the kids and see what they come up with. I mean, they're the ones that inspire a lot of the things that we do and we just kind of follow their lead and try to come up with ways to help them make what they want to happen, happen in the classroom. And I'm sure you have many ideas and wonderful projects that you have going on in your classrooms too. And I encourage you to reach out to the three of us on Twitter or Instagram and share those ideas because that's how we grow as educators is sharing those ideas with each other. So thank you so much. Glad to answer any questions you have and we'll see you soon. Yay, so we have a couple of minutes for questions. So if you have questions, go ahead and type them in. I just want to point out I love how you are capturing the process of learning so well with CISA and allowing students to reflect and try another iteration. And I love that not only are they able to reflect but that it processes shared outside of classroom as well, which is always great. So a couple of questions coming in, we'll try to get through as many as we can in the next couple of minutes, but you might have to be reaching out to these amazing teachers online as well.