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3/27
Planning for Cardboard Arcade Wednesday April 30 is cardboard arcade 5:30-7:30 (5-8 if counting set-up and clean-up) Thursday and Friday for kids can play during school Open door between cafeteria and multipurpose room Put a few of the other science activities in the discovery lab and in the gym lobby

Cardboard Arcade Use something like a credit card with icons Have families come with plan/ make plan ahead of time - must show plan to "banker" to get a credit card With plan packet, should include a "rules" paper - must have this done for game to check into arcade (Erin will get materials thing and a map)

Games can be picked up Friday afternoon starting at 12:00. If games are not picked up by 3:30 it goes in the garbage)
Last class that is playing needs to collect the balls. Have teachers sign-up for what station they want to work

2/5
STEM Across the School and Cardboard Arcade

Engineers week - Pick one day during engineers week. Find one hour to work with partner class on STEM activities. STEM across Harrison Day! Probably Friday of Engineers week (2/21) ...2/16 -2/27. Ask grade levels to get together (K/1, 2/3, 4/5 suggested) and find one hour to work on projects. Ask grade levels to send topic name and time to Stephanie. Send out invites to county leadership to invite them to come and see our projects.

Staff Deadlines - choose partner and project and turn into Stephanie by Wednesday 2/12 Suggested List of materials and amount of materials (think cotton balls, craft sticks, straws, masking tape, paper plate, paper cups etc...) by Friday 2/14 submitted to Erin

Cardboard Arcade - Wed. April 30. Adding a math part In advance send home a material list and a price list and have "Mariner Bucks" This will prevent hoarding of materials and massive sized projects.

Do we want to do Thorp night of science at the same time? - Yes! Open doors between caf. and multipurpose room and set-up Throp in back of caf. and use the tables to separate sections.

Build Wed. Night. Thurs. and Fri tour the arcade. Friday after dismissal staff meets in MP room to dismantle arcade. Projects don't go home!

Possible Thorp Science in Discovery Lab.

10/10
STEM Fair- 12/5 Thursday Status Report - 3rd, 5th have plans for what the projects will be. Kindergarten - each class will be doing own project. Elizabeth will ask K/2 teachers what the project ideas are. If any one needs materials and supplies let Freda know. Will order 50 new boards. People need to ask Erin D. about materials before buying things. Grade levels will come up with a list of materials they think will need and get it to Erin by Friday 10/18. Who is STEM fair coordinator? -Denise Ritz Encourage teachers to ask for help!! Displays will be set up k-2 in discovery lab and 3/5 in media center. After projects are completed, we suggest that students 3-5 present projects to each other in their class. K-2 can do it as grade level. Nitty Gritty details of STEM fair will be discussed at November Meeting. Formal Invitations will be sent to Board of Ed and Senior Leadership of county. -Stephanie will take care of this

STEM Goals for the year ~4.3 Find ways to celebrate and display STEM projects (move from Early to Developing) ~ 2.2 Leaders are creating plans to provide opportunities for students to meet STEM professionals and/or to experience professional STEM work environments during and/or after school (move to early) ~ 7.1 STEM Program plan - need a detailed STEM program plan (move from Early to Developing)

Send Erin pictures and short blurbs about STEM projects!!

4/11
Logo Discussion - Discuss what symbols can we change Freda will get a flash drive for Ms. Connie to put the illustrator program on it. Denise will call Ms. Connie and explain what changes we suggest. We will table the color conversation until we talk with a printer and Ms. Connie.

Fantabulous Night of STEM feedback - Thorp - packed, a lot of people, whole families sat together and were very positive - Arcade - - crowded but fun! - Next year move Thorp Night to different location but keep on same night - Could not have been optional for teachers we needed them all to succeed. Clean up plan for next year

UNC - Elementary Ed student teachers - want to come and watch what we do. STEM and teachers in training so they can think about a STEM class.

Rest of Year Goals -Get Engineering Kits done - Look forward and plan when kits will be done and by what grade levels - Training May 7 with Liz and August 21 - Get survey done and review feedback -Get list of teachers and colleges for signs outside doors - Rebranded - possible street signs for hallways

2/7
Two Professors from UNC came to talk with us today about a possible partnership between our schools and to do something for engineers week. Working on student to student connections. -Team needs to think about how we can partnership with the two student programs at UNC - Engineering week is the week of 2/18. Ideas: - Have students come in to lead a basic engineering task. Erin has a huge amounts of activities that we can use. - Dr. Aitken will contact his students and arrange a meeting for his students to meet with us, hopefully next week (we are aiming for Monday) Next steps: - Dr. A - Contact his students -Erin - compile a bank of activities -Ms. Hicks - send initial email to staff - After Engineering activity - meet again to discuss long term plans

STEM Logo - - Uses - website, t-shirts, letterhead, signage, etc... - Colors - ideally, colorful one for website, signs, not so colorful one for shirts etc. (can we price it out) - We have one window to update website, can we have a design by the end of March

Thorp Science Night - - Freda applied to Thorp Science Night - Our responsibility is to do it, advertise for the NC science festival and evaluate it - We need volunteers to staff stations and gather materials

Cardboard challenge - - We will need to combine it with Thorp Science Night - The idea is to do cardboard arcade in multipurpose room and Thorp night in cafeteria - Date is March 21 - The Fantabulous Night of Science and Engineering - Then teachers will be asked to sign up for 20-30 mins. shifts on Friday to "play" the arcade -March 22 - my class will clean up at 2:00 Friday afternoon - 2/12 - present cardboard video and expectations to staff - expectation that this is mandatory -Put plea for large scale cardboard in newsletters, have it delivered to office

Board of Education - No longer happening this year

Rachel Freeman - March 1 -visit - We can stay at Freda's beach house -After visit (about 2 hours) head home - Leave Thursday after school

When State person was here she gave us the criteria for becoming an official STEM school

Date of Next Meeting: 2/28 -

12/18
STEM Fair re-cap - Should work on STEM fair planning in committees - Need a working time line for teachers to start the year - Need to streamline handouts and info that teachers receive - How successful were we in overlapping our STEM fair with the Chatham County science fair? - Need more consistent communication - We need a budget - Teacher feedback- Overall positive and we now have a better understanding of how to improve this concept - Parent feedback was very positive! School Visit Re-cap - We need a STEM position - Discussion on school branding "Learners Today, Leaders Tomorrow" - We need a PR person - Denise would like to take on this role - Maybe make it a "yearbook/publicity committee" - Mr. Logan has asked the STEM committee to do a STEM presentation to the school board - all STEM members will participate - Possibly interview kids on their thoughts. - Get a work-up of our design

First STEM Meeting of 2012/13 School Year!
- Ms. Hicks has lined up trainings for staff in STEM. Dates in October. - Erin gave Ms. HIcks of kits for the school to purchase to help with STEM lessons (likely be 1 per grade level) - We need to advance and have a place for stuff and to make a mess with learning. Creating a raw materials room / discovery lab (The Learning Lab will be in Erin's room) We are brainstorming ideas for how to organize the raw materials and the other supplies. We may want to look into a discovery lab coordinator through the PTA. - We need to start the conversation with parents about STEM and what they see for their child's future. GIve 3 opportunities for conversations about what you see as important to your child's education. - It seems like we need to focus this year on communication of our vision and locations for things like our discovery lab

- Science Fair Discussion - Erin went to a Coaches meeting and asked if Science Fair is a requirement in Elementary School. They said "no but we strongly encourage involvement" - We brainstormed many ideas and as a team we like the idea of school learning teams investigations instead of home projects. We will be following the district model so our projects will be eligible for county competition. - We should be ready to present ideas to staff during the October 22.

-we want to use the prepared Rubric but simplify it so the staff is not overwhelmed by the idea of STEM
- GOAL for Survey - We want to know where are now and how much work do we need to do until we are a school that is STEM rich (interest and capacity) - Survey will be introduced on Tuesday 3/6 by Mandi. Survey will be emailed shortly after training.Erin and Stephanie will get together to choose which items are in the survey

Erin spoke with women from the webinar - she suggested that we join the STEM network Mandi shared the idea of talking with CCCC (Central Carolina Community College) to partner with in some way. Maybe financial or resources etc... Laura Lauffer is the person Mandi contacted. Back-ups would be schools like Elon and Meredith University, or other smaller schools nearby. We may want to talk with Habitat for Humanity as a resource. The Abundance Foundation - very hands on activities for kids.

Updates on other schools that are STEMs - seem to be mostly Magnet schools. Trying to find exactly what we are looking for in a school. The idea we have now is to break up into pairs and visit schools. Ideally we would see one well established school and one school that is new to this process. We would like to visit schools in March.

Next Steps Mandi presents at meeting 3/6 Erin and Stephanie will grapple with survey questions Mandi and Erin will continue with CCCC and Stephanie will email Elon.

Next Meeting - Right before school visits ideally 3/22 with school visits scheduled the following week (hopefully). We will meet in April to debrief from school visits and examine survey results. April Meeting - 4/19