Field Trips
Now I have never known a student who does not want to attend a field trip. Every student enjoys the opportunity to take a break from day-to-day school work and get out into the community. You would be surprised the amount of educational field trip opportunities there are for students. I am extremely lucky as an educator because our Gifted program offers an abundant amount of opportunities throughout the year for our students to participate in. It gives our kids an opportunity to get out into the community for some real life experiences and challenges.
Our district is in a partnership with the Tom Ridge Environmental Center (TREC) in Erie, PA. Even though the commute to get to most of these activities are about an hour in a half away, it is well worth the extra hours in the day to give these kids those opportunities. In the rest of this blog you will read about individual opportunities that our students have had over the past few years. Feel free to do some research and see what offerings are available in your areas, not only for Gifted students, but your classroom kids as well.
K'Nex Challenge
The K'Nex Challenge is offered state wide for students to participate in. Each year there are new requirements for different age levels. Those requirements include a budget, design process, blueprints, model that works, teamwork, journaling, and presentations. Our students are willing to give up their time during their lunch, recess, and even after school in order to work on these projects. The commitment I see from these kids and the motivation they have make it worth while. Each year they update the STEM design challenge and parameters for requirements. Check it out for yourself in the second link below for a chance to see what challenge they had this year. Your local IU (Intermediate Unit) typically supports this program if you are looking for further resources.
Warren County 2019 Competition - Note 2020 it got cancelled and 2021 we were not allowed field trips
K'Nex Design Challenge Link
Mathcounts
For all of those math lovers out there Mathcounts is the way to go. This competition is one of the most intense things I have ever sat through. The speed round is absolutely unbelievable with the how quickly a student can answer a math problem. In less time it takes the proctor to read the question, some of the kids already have the answers to the questions. It is truly eye opening to see how spectacular and talented kids are from all over PA. It says a lot when students are willing to get up at 6am on a Saturday to go to Gannon University to do math all day long. My first year with my students I had one kid score 15th. That is incredible to be in the top 15. He was only 5 spots away from making it into the speed round for top ten
https://www.timesobserver.com/news/community/2019/03/eisenhowers-jensen-15th-out-of-136-mathcounts-participants/
My second year there I had a student score 11th. I was so proud of his hard work and efforts. You should have seen the smile on his face for placing one away from top ten. When I asked him if he wanted to do it again next year you could see his eyes light up as he said "oh yeah!". Unfortunately with COVID this year the time we had to prep for the virtual competition was limited and was a lot more challenging for some of the students. It was still a great opportunity that my students had to show their strengths in math.
"Shipwreck B-Wet" Research Project
The "Shipwreck B-Wet" project was another great opportunity our kids had for a challenge. TREC was offering this project to our students to research, create presentations on shipwrecks in Erie, PA, 3D print models, and learn how to scuba dive to search for ships below the surface. Our students had such a blast with all of this. They were extremely engaged in the process the entire time. This project was spread out over the months of October to March. Luckily we got to scuba dive the day we found out our school was shutting down for COVID in 2020. Our students were lucky enough to go to our local YMCA, try on scuba gear, and dive for articles on the bottom. This was the final step in the project that made all of the effort worth it. I can honestly say I was right there in the pool with them. I was scuba diving and having a blast learning how to mathematically locate debris and shipwrect content, as well as measure below the surface.
Hack-a-Thon
The Hack-a-Thon is hosted every year by the Regional Science Consortium in Erie, Pa. Every year there is some sort of mystery murder that takes place and students have to figure out who the the true murderer is. They utilize fingerprinting, DNA analysis, questioning witnesses, and so on to discover who the true killer was. The kids get so into the experience that they truly feel like they are the detective on the case. They get to use scientific technology where they become forensic analysts who have limited time to figure out who murdered the victim. This past year with COVID, they were nice enough to send materials to our school so we could host it virtually within the classroom. It was such a great learning experience and opportunity.
Escape Room
The Escape Room is also hosted by the Regional Science Consortium. They offer an opportunity for students to come up and try to solve a real world problem. It is not your typical "Escape Room" where you have to break out, but you have to solve a problem that is facing our environment, create a solution, and present it. My first year teaching they had to solve the Bee Pollination problem. The second year they had create an environmentally friendly school, and this year they had to create some form of wetland, marsh or bog around the schools in order to solve a problem such as flooding or erosion. The kids enjoyed researching, designing, and creating a presentation to promote their design for sales.
Challenge 24
Challenge 24 is a fun game where students have to use all 4 numbers located on the card in order to make a total of 24. They can use addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division in order to get there. There are some rules involved that students must adhere to thought. They are only given 15 seconds on each card to solve it. They are penalized for mathematical mistakes that could remove them from the rest of the game in a competition when responding to a card. Also, they are only given 3 seconds to start their responses for their answer and all answers but be stated last step first. Once they state the last step, then they are to walk through the whole process to get there. They are only allowed a certain amount of time for the whole round of competition and they can only tap the card with one to three fingers. That is a lot for kids to remember, let alone the math portion as well. This is a great challenge for our math lovers out there though. We had the opportunity to host a smaller district competition this year due to COVID, but typically it is hosted by the IU5 for us.
Review
Here are a few more that we have had the chance to participate in over the past three years.
- Governor's STEM Competition
- Women In Engineering-TREC
- College Prep Program- TREC/Gannon University
- Erie Maritime Museum History/Exploration
- Sail the Brig Niagara
- Sphero Educational Day- Create a Parade
No comments:
Post a Comment