Ritchie Elementary School in Wheeling to Receive $6,000 in Grants for ‘STEM in a Box’ Projects
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WHEELING -- Inventive minds today have to wonder if Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, ever envisioned young school children replicating his experiments 150 years later in new school "maker spaces."
Ritchie Elementary School has received two grants totalling $6,000 to bring "STEM In a Box" projects -- and learning about famous inventors like Bell -- to its students.
Ohio County Board of Education members were told of the grants, and how the award money will be used during their board meeting this week. Providing the update was Principal Jim Jorden and teacher Gina Pollard, who serves as media specialist innovation coach at Ritchie.
The first grant is for $5,000, and is an Intermediate Unit 1 Innovation mini-grant funded by the Benedum Foundation, Chevron and the EQT Foundation.
The second grant, for $1,000, is a STEM-minded Education Grant courtesy of the West Virginia Department of Education.
STEM stands for "science, technology, engineering and math" learning. When you add in an "A" for art, it makes for STEAM education.
Pollard told the board she has used the grant money to purchase items to help aid in STEAM and innovative learning for all students at all grade levels — including pre-kindergarten and autism students.
She ordered ready-made science kits for each class, and these have been placed in the maker space at the school. Each kit focusses on an inventor, a theme or a fairy tale, she explained.
Pollard brought with her the kit centering around the inventor Bell.
After reading about a famous inventor, students use the included pieces and step-by-step design cards to plan, build and test one of the inventor's important creations--a telephone system, a telegraph or a motion-picture viewer.
As innovation coordinator, Pollard assists the students and their teachers in completing the projects.
She does the planning and organizing of projects for the teachers, and provides them what materials and direction they need for projects.
"My vision is to take what the students are learning in the classroom and implement them into my media classroom," she said. "I want my media class to be an extension of what they are learning in their classrooms."
But the challenge for teachers these days is to make lessons work for students even when they all can't be together in a classroom, Pollard explained.
"All of the supplies they need can be found inside the box," she said of the students. "They also can be done at home if they are a remote learner."
The kits can assist students in learning about such things as the properties of matter, the importance of eliminating germs while hand washing, and how blubber helps keep mammals warm in a cold environment.
The kits also should help Ritchie's maker space to become "a true learning lab."
"Students at all grade levels will have the opportunity to create and learn with hands-on experiments thanks to these grants," Pollard said.