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Canfield starts STEM in kindergarten to "create an interest at first"
By ROBERT CONNELLY
CANFIELD
Kindergartners were locked in attention as they connected pieces of plastic to form shapes at a table.
That table is one of five stations within the kindergarten Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, or STEM, room at Hilltop Elementary.
“We have to create an interest at first,” said Alex Geordan, Canfield schools superintendent.
Though some of the tables’ activities might just look like play, kids are identifying the shapes they are linking up. Kindergartners of Lisa Zetts were showing their projects to her while she engaged with them to further their interest.
“Mrs. Z, I made a house,” an excited student told Zetts. “What’s the shape of the top of that house?” she asked as she walked toward the student to further instruct the child.
“It looks like play, but you are hearing kids say rhombus and triangle” along with other shapes, said Joe Maroni, Hilltop principal.
“They’re very engaged. They’re very excited about learning,” Zetts said.
“If they like it, they learn it,” Maroni said.
The five stations, with students moving in groups of four to five, allows “them a lot of opportunities to learn the same concepts in different ways,” Maroni said.
There was a mat on the floor with students playing with tubes to construct towers. A marble could spin through a cylinder or vertical tubes to create an even larger structure. Another station was a table with headphones and students using iPads, or computer tablets, to change things in a room and notice those changes, such as opening curtains on a window.
This is an extension of STEM week that occurs every year in November at Hilltop, Maroni said. Through discussion with kindergarten teachers and an available room, the STEM room was put together with items currently in the district.
“These kids are very creative, and if you could focus that creativity in the areas that STEM covers, they’re going to come up with some neat things,” Maroni said. “That’s going to start the lifelong learning process at an early age, and it starts with a little bit of play, and it turns into activities that are meaningful.”
Geordan explained that professions and job opportunities available for the kindergartners by the time they graduate high school and college will be different from what they are now. “We have to make [their learning] broad. We have to give them a large umbrella to cover different types of jobs, workforce opportunities after graduation,” he said.