STEAM Solutions

TCS students have been enjoying cross-curricular lessons from the story The Little Red Hen. In Compass, teacher Mrs. Gibbs asked her students to use their creativity to change or build upon the story in any way they wished and use a shadowbox stage to act out/narrate the story. This presented a new challenge – how will they keep the light for the shadowbox in place to make the characters stand out? Mrs. Gibbs turned to our STEAM students for help! Given this challenge, middle school STEAM students engineered a variety of flashlight holders for the Compass students. After presenting them to Mrs. Gibbs, they listened to her feedback and made necessary adjustments. Their ideas were all very different and ranged from simple to complex, but all solved the problem. Mrs. Gibbs says, “I was so proud of our students’ creative thinking. When students learn to become creative thinkers, they learn to move beyond real or perceived barriers. Problem-solving/inventive thinking skills give students strategies to go beyond these limits to develop novel or unconventional solutions.”