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STEM Blog
Celebrating Digital Learning Day!
Technology is an integral part of our everyday lives. SLS has integrated technology into each classroom and is committed to using it seamlessly across all subject areas. On Thursday, we celebrated Digital Learning Day to recognize our continuing efforts to apply cutting edge technology to increase student learning. #BeaKnight #DLDay
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OLGC Math Bowl!
Our St. Louis School Math team competed this past week in the 45th Annual Math contest hosted by Our Lady of Good Counsel High School. The SLS Mathletes came home with some hardware – placing 3rd overall! We are so proud of these talented students and grateful to their teacher Ms. Dottie Peterson, for leading the way! #BeaKnight
FLL State Championship
Congratulations to two of our First Lego League teams, The Space Nuggets, and The Nebula Narwhals, who competed at the Maryland State Championship on Saturday, February 23rd. The competition consisted of three elements: A real-world problem-solving presentation, the “core values” team collaboration challenge and the robotics individual mission events. Our teams proudly represented SLS after qualifying to compete against 64 teams at the state level, an accomplishment in its own.
We are excited to report that the Nebula Narwhals brought home a 3rd place overall win for their real-life problem-solving project presentation focusing on the issue of excess trash in space.
Lastly, we wanted to extend a big thank you to our dedicated parent volunteers who have championed our four FLL teams this school year.
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Clawbots!
SLS students in the Cyber STEM spring session are busy working with the VEX IQ robot kits and are assembling the "ClawBots.” After assembly and checkout, students will program these robots to interact with the environment and solve increasingly difficult challenges.
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Hearts and Minds!
Valentine’s Day is a day to celebrate love and at St Louis School we love STEM!
As part of our continued commitment to STEM education, we held a school-wide activity yesterday to engage our students in critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and communication.
Challenge activities included heart-shaped pinwheels, 3D-printed heart shapes, candy-carrying origami frogs, crystal hearts, physics-defying oobleck, love boats, Valentine’s Day themed dialogue boxes, newspaper towers, animal habitat exploration, curious chemical reactions and even flying cupids.
Because happy teachers are effective teachers, we started the day with Valentine’s Day donuts, coffee and chocolate. Each teacher was encouraged to complete the development process by providing feedback about their activity and how their students responded. You can get a sense of how the day progressed in the photographs below.
Students and faculty had a fun-filled, inquiry-based educational experience and we look forward to many more.
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Cookies anyone?
3D printing empowers individuals to design something and bring it to life as a tangible, physical item. SLS is bringing this power to our students in Computer Class as early as in Third Grade.
Developing 3D design skills incorporates imagination, critical thinking, spatial awareness and an the trial-and-error nature of engineering. Our curriculum makes these concepts understandable to the students at the appropriate grade level.
As part of this effort, each SLS Fourth Grader designed a cookie cutter using an online application called TinkerCad. A representative design was printed on our new Dremel 3D printers, allowing each Fourth Graders to take a cookie cutter home.
One Fourth Grader, in particular, was so enamored with the cutter that she used it to make a batch of sugar cookies, decorated for Valentine’s Day. We are so happy to see our STEM program is motivating students to take action on their own initiative!
How do we Teach Stem?
Ready for our Valentine’s Day STEM Fun period, a school-wide opportunity to engage in #stem with a focus on collaborating, exploring possibilities, designing, and problem-solving
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Calculating Chances
Over the course of a game of Monopoly, how likely is it that you would end up in jail? As part of our ongoing STEM Speaker Series today SLS Fifth Grade students had the opportunity to learn how to compute the answer to that and similar questions from Mr. Mike Blasi, retired National Security Agency employee. Mr. Blasi is a member of the NSA Speakers Bureau, serves as a guide at the National Cryptologic Museum in Fort Meade. Mr. Blasi was assisted by his daughter, Laura former SLS student. SLS students learned about real-world applications of probability and random processes. They learned how to form a hypothesis and test it using the scientific method. To make these concepts more relatable, Mr. Blasi discussed how dice and coin flips can affect outcomes in games like Monopoly, Risk, and Yahtzee. We want to thank Mr. Blasi for taking time out of his day and coming to SLS to provide a better understanding of probability, statistics and why they will almost assuredly not win the lottery. Stay tuned as we continue our STEM Speaker Series in the coming weeks.
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Learning about Clouds
Today during second-grade science, Mrs. Anacker did a fun project with the students to help them remember and reinforce their learning about the four types of clouds. Which is your favorite: Cumulus, Nimbus, Stratus or Cirrus?
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Galactic Knights
The fourth St. Louis School FIRST LEGO League (FLL) team will be competing tomorrow (Saturday) at the Prince Georges Community College state qualifier in Largo. The SLS community wishes the Galactic Knights, coached by Lou Faustini, Kelly Scott Davis, and Michael Piszczek the best. A huge thank you to the parent coaches and volunteers for their support of the team. Go Knights, we are very proud of you!
Galaxy Voyagers
Goals of the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) include helping students develop critical thinking and team-building skills. Today, the Galaxy Voyagers demonstrated these attributes during the qualifier event at DeMatha High School in Hyattsville. The team, comprised of students ranging from Fourth to Seventh Grade, excelled at what FLL calls “Gracious Professionalism.” The older students acted as mentors to the younger ones and inspired them to work together during their Project Presentation and Core Values competition. This team excelled in team spirit and even led the crowd in a line dance with the judges in the middle of the floor! St. Louis School is very proud of these students and grateful to their coaches, Beth Simon, Muditha Allen and Francisco Andolz for their leadership and support. Way to Go Knights!
Rubik's Cube Club
Did you know there are more than 43 quintillion ways to scramble the Rubik’s Cube? Our Rubik’s Cube Club is up for the challenge!
