A new, weekly class at Attica Elementary School aims to boost creative thinking, encourage curiosity and foster collaboration among students - all while providing opportunities for students to explore different career pathways open to them once they graduate.
While only a few months old, this new STEAM class - an acronym for science, technology, engineering, agriculture and math - can trace its roots back to 2019, when the U.S. Department of Education awarded Attica a $2.8 million School Climate Grant.
That funding allowed the elementary school to offer, among other things, an after school STEM club, which Stenson led for the past four years.
“For that after school club, our director of curriculum, Matt Stroud, had me going to trainings for STEM, doing webinars, going to conferences and visiting other schools so that I could get a better handle on things,” said Stenson. “I think he had quite a vision that hopefully, one day, we’d be able to get this class up and running, so he was forward-thinking for sure.”
With the hiring of Superintendent Dr. Kiel Illg last summer and the appointment of Sherry Bennett as interim elementary school principal a few months later, the idea of creating a STEM class began to gain momentum.
“When I came to the Elementary School, STEAM was something I was passionate about adding as an opportunity for our students,” said Bennett. “There are so many benefits of STEAM for elementary students - it increases innovative thinking and allows students an opportunity to think outside the box, it encourages curiosity and creativity and it fosters communication between students and their classmates.”
Illg was of a like mind and said he felt strongly that introducing dedicated STEAM instruction at the elementary school level would benefit Attica students not only in the short term, but as they grow.
“I feel our STEAM education program fosters critical thinking, creativity, and problem solving skills,” he said. “By integrating these skill concepts in our elementary education program we aim to inspire a love for learning and exploration at an early age.”
After getting the greenlight from administrators, Stenson worked with Stroud to build the class from the ground up. She leaned on her past experience leading the after school STEM club and teaching subject during summer school to flesh out the class and finalize the six units - NASA and space, engineering, agriculture, Lego challenges, coding and robotics and science - she’ll be covering with students this school year.
Stenson tailors her lessons to the grade level she happens to be teaching. She tends to stick with the basics for younger grades but is able to explore more complex concepts and topics in greater depth with her third and fourth graders.
Kindergarteners started out the school year with the science unit. Stenson talked to the students about what an observation is and how to make one.
“One of the things we talked about is we have to look up and down,” Stenson said. “When we’re outside, the kids are looking straight ahead at their world, they're not realizing what else could be out there, so we talked about what could we see when we look up, what could we see when we look down?”
After covering the basics of observation, Stenson passed out handheld, digital microscopes to each student before leading them outside for a nature scavenger hunt.
“So when we went outside on our scavenger hunt, they had items they were looking for and after they found those they were looking at leaves through their microscopes and their little faces were just in awe of what you could see,” she said. “They couldn’t even believe it. They’d look at a leaf, then look at it under the microscope and be like ‘That’s not the leaf,’ so that was really gratifying to see.”
Around the same time kindergarteners were learning about how to make scientific observations, Stenson’s first graders were learning about the solar system and how celestial bodies can orbit around one another as part of their NASA and space unit.
Using this knowledge, first graders created their own model of the Sun, Earth and Moon using paper plates, strips of construction paper and brass fasteners, which allowed the moon to rotate freely around the Earth and the Earth to rotate freely around the Sun.
While the STEAM class is only a few months old, Bennett said she’s already seen the positive effects it’s had on students.
“One of the coolest things I see is that it builds confidence in our students and teaches them that it’s OK to fail,” she said. “When they are given a problem in the STEAM classroom they make an attempt and they may fail, but they make changes and try again. Finding a solution after they’ve struggled motivates students and teaches them that even when things get difficult, they should keep trying.”
While Bennett hears directly from students at school about how excited they are about the new class - “They love the hands-on challenges that they’re given, the topics they’re learning about and the ability to work together with their classmates,” - she said many students are also bringing that excitement home.
“I’ve had many parents share with me that their children have come home and were excited to talk about what they had learned with Mrs. Stenson,” Bennett said. “Walking into the STEAM classroom always puts a smile on my face, the students are so excited to share their knowledge with me and show me their work.”
In addition to providing opportunities to explore interesting topics and collaborate with one another, Stenson’s hopeful the new class helps open students’ eyes to what career paths are out there to be pursued.
“This is my 30th year teaching and I’ve spent so much time in a regular classroom and, as time’s gone by, we’ve become stuck a little bit more to what our state requirements are,” she said. “Those kind of ‘extra’ things where, in the past, we could do some career exploration activities with our kids, now we really have to figure out how to get to those kids’ minds. This class is one of those creative ways we can do that while also supplementing the science instruction students are receiving and math instruction and everything else.”
In coming years and in part because of its success at the elementary school level, Illg said the district is hoping to expand its STEAM curriculum into the Middle School and, eventually, the High School.
Kindergarten students in Sarah Stenson’s STEAM class are pictured earlier this year participating in a lesson about making observations.
First grade students in Sarah Stenson’s STEAM class are pictured during a lesson on the solar system earlier this year.
Second grade students in Sarah Stenson’s STEAM class are pictured during a lesson on coding earlier this year.