What
Canfield STEM Club joined forces with our new Engineering Club and now hosts weekly activities centered around methodical thinking techniques, engineering and building projects. This builds the students' complex thinking abilities in a fun environment. Adult-supervised and held on-site at local schools.
When
Sessions are one hour a week.
Who
Program is overseen by Matt King, a design and technology teacher at Canfield Middle School, Ryan Eaton (STEM Chair on the board for GTS) and the help of high school students. We look for student coaches who have a helpful spirit and a desire to teach others, as well as those who love science and other aspects of STEM.
Why
It’s fun! Kids work together to build and solve queries using simple materials. Student coaches benefit in terms of empathy, confidence, and leadership. Participants benefit by increasing their knowledge and problem-solving skills, cementing their interest in STEM, and building relationships with older student coach role models.
How
Our program moves rapidly through activities to keep student attention. Each session we have a short discussion about qualities of good buildings or bridges, a scientific/construction problem that the students will have to solve, time for students to break up into groups run by student coaches to solve these scientific problems, and notebooks to write in hypotheses and results. They spend time in a structured environment, learning across different age groups, building and testing their ideas.
