Exciting things are happening at Moore Elementary School ! Brentwood teachers Kate Smeltz , Barbara Girone , Megan Casey , and Brittanie Schneider have recently raised funds for Moore Elementary STEAM lessons to be connected to our students ’ classroom curriculum . Last year , our school launched the “ Imagination Station 4 Innovation ,” hosted primarily in the school library . Fourth graders who applied to be “ head engineers ” met after school once every week to learn the basics of coding , architecture , building , and teamwork .
Following the success of this project , the “ Imagination Station 4 Innovation ” will be reaching out to other grade levels as well . In the 2016-2017 school year , first graders at Moore have been learning about Native American culture , life , and history . Connections from the Asset Science “ Weather Unit ” have been stretched into Library classes , where students read stories about different tribes and researched where these tribes lived . By studying and discussing these stories , first grade learned about the Wampanoag , Abeneki , and Iroquois tribes in connection to their stories and the settings of those stories .
Connections have been made in other special classes as well ; in music class , first grade listened to music of different Native American tribes and learned how this culture uses drumming as a form of communication . Students practiced responding to Native American “ Welcome Songs ” to get in their class circle to sing and dance , and then composed their own drum beats with their
MOORE ELEMENTARY
IS4I Up-Date By Mrs . Brittanie Schneider
project group . These drum compositions were then recorded , and will be heard while the wigwams are on display .
Wigwam research continued in Technology class , where students located where each tribe was located , and what the weather for that region was historically for the Native Americans . Using this data , students were able to determine what kind of shelter each tribe had lived in and how the weather played a large factor in what kind of shelter the Natives built . In the next few weeks , first graders will be incorporating scratch coding and Hummingbird robotics to program lights to light up their wigwams , and to play their Native American drum beats recorded in music class .
All of this Native American learning was put to the test in Art class , where students used cardboard , paper straws of various sizes , brown construction paper , tape , and a compass to build their own shelters . Groups began by sketching out ideas for the wigwams . Students discussed how to make the wigwams strong enough to survive different types of weather they had researched in Science and in Technology class , depending on the region the tribe had lived in . The groups then measured a circle with a compass , and then collaborated to create a frame with the straws . Once the frame was built , the students ripped construction paper to cover the frame , imitating the layered outer shell of historical wigwams . To complete the art part of the project , students used a reflection paper to look closely at their team work , evaluate the strength of the wigwams against weather elements , and how they could have improved their build . rentwood Borough
SCHOOL DISTRICT NEWS
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