Brentwood School students get creative

Adelle Ellis
Times Reporter

 

École Brentwood Elementary has been providing Grade 4 students with a new fun and educational afterschool activity.
Design Lab is based off the term STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) which is newer to education. It is a project that Brentwood Grade 6 teacher, Chantelle Keim, created to let students try new activities that are geared towards the topics of STEAM.
“The students really enjoy it,” said Keim. “My Grade 6 (students) are jealous that I’m not running it for them as well.”
On Feb. 27, students used Makey Makey boards to create circuits out of everyday objects that conduct a tiny bit of electricity, including their own bodies (a Makey Makey is an electronic invention tool and toy that allows users to connect everyday objects to computer programs). Students created actions in their laptops and hooked up the Makey Makey boards to the laptops. Using different alligator clips hooked up to certain parts of their board, each wire represented a different command. Once the circuit was completed, such as by students high fiving each other, then the action would happen. Students were able to make a cat on the computer screen meow or a truck’s engine rev.
“This is more the technology side, but I try to come up with different things that cover all the topic of STEAM,” said Keim.
Past STEAM activities have included building the tallest tower out of newspaper and tape, making a bridge, and conducting an oil spill workshop where students had to figure out how to get oil out of a bucket of water using different materials.
One bonus about the program as opposed to other after-school activities is that students can pick and choose what programs they would like to participate in based on their interests and on their schedule, though most of the students attend Design Lab nearly every week.
“This is beneficial for the kids for sure. I don’t think that they think they’re learning while they are doing things like this because it’s fun, but they definitely are,” said Keim. “There are so many different thing that we’ve done and we will do a lot more. I don’t think they would ever get the exposure to this type of stuff either if it wasn’t for a program like this after school.
“Parents are shocked at how much their kids know and can do when they leave at the end of the hour. It gives the kids something productive to do after school.”