School News

STEAM labs the new wave in Wantagh

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With a little space to spare in each elementary school, Wantagh has taken advantage of that and created a place for students to study science, technology, engineering, art and math.

Known simply as the STEAM program, it is one of the newest movements in education, and one that doesn’t focus on testing. Rather, it gives children a chance to use their imaginations and explore their creativity. 

If approved, the Wantagh School District’s 2016-17 budget would provide more resources for the STEAM program, including a full-time teacher who would split his or her time between the three elementary schools. 

The STEAM labs in each school are already thriving. “Teachers can come into this room and do whatever kind of STEAM activity they want,” said Forest Lake Elementary School Principal Anthony Ciuffo. “They’re coming up with idea after idea.”

The room at Forest Lake was once a classroom, and had been divided into two storage closets. Earlier in the year, walls were taken down, a new ceiling was put in, furniture was setup and by January, the school’s STEAM lab was up and running. Since then, Ciuffo said the room is in use for much of each day.

There are some items that the district has purchased, such as Galaxy tablets and a three-dimensional printer. Other supplies have been donated by members of the community. “There is a mix of high-tech and low-tech,” Ciuffo said, pointing to a robotics kit in one corner, and boxes of Legos in another.

Computer teacher Cathy Schlaich made good use of that robotics kit last Thursday morning for a lesson with second-graders about the solar system. Using small robots called Ozobots, Schlaich made nine black circular lines on a large piece of paper, broken up by combinations of blue, red and green dots. Each Ozobot represented a different planet, to show the students how each travels around the sun. The dots sent signals to each robot telling it how fast to go, and which direction to turn. 

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