Models, Expos, Egg Drops, Inventions, and Haikus
Area schools explore a variety of ways to prompt 21st century learning
STEM education isn’t just about teaching science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to students of all ages.
It’s also about combining those subjects — often adding art for STEAM — to engage student interest in the technical and design skills needed for jobs in the 21st century.
This roundup of area examples is but a sampling of how STEM/STEAM learning is unfolding on campuses near you.
The Compass School of Texas
A second-grade class’s heart studies began with a well-known spider.
The book Charlotte’s Web sparked the curiosity of students tasked with exploring “heartwarming tales” before turning inward aided by a Compass parent with expertise in the blood-pumping organ.
Dr. Matthew Dickson provided insight into cardiovascular disease and nuclear cardiology, leading to health and wellness lessons focused on what makes a heart healthy.
Students looked at nutrition and physical activity to understand the impact of diet and exercise.
The school’s farm-to-table program’s hands-on food curriculum paired the students’ participation in gardening with creating and eating foods that are delicious and healthy.
Organ studies continued in art class, where students worked with their teacher to create a three-foot labelled heart.
In math, they designed a game to study the flow of red and white blood cells, moving pieces through the body, and adding ones on their way to the heart.
For English, the students wrote essays and showcased them for parents and grandparents. Their guests encountered hanging blood vessels and cells and so experienced entering into “the heart of the lesson.”
Dallas ISD
Texas’ second largest school district, unsurprisingly, tackles STEAM learning in huge ways.
Dallas ISD is home to the largest STEM Expo in Texas, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in February 2024 at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center.
The 2025 expo is scheduled Jan. 25 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Fair Park.
District leaders describe it as more than a scientific fair, because it allows students to investigate, design, and create real-world science, technology, engineering and math and brings together numerous district departments and campuses, as well as industry and academic partners.
“Our participants often get enthusiastic when they see new exhibitions or get in touch early to volunteer or participate,” Crystal Alexander, a Dallas ISD graduate and employee for nearly a quarter century, told the district’s news team in 2024. “The most positive comment is witnessing families come back year after year with more members.”
In a more recent example of the district’s expansive STEAM focus, the Dallas ISD Texas Math & Science Coaches Association had to hold two invitational meets in the fall to accommodate all those wanting to practice for UIL competition.
More than 1,300 students from 91 schools participated in the meet with students in grades three through 12 competing in number sense, calculator applications, math, and science.
“I’ve seen firsthand how the competition positively impacts my students,” said Kendall Russo, the TMSCA coach at Everette L. Degolyer Elementary School. “Through their participation, they’ve developed a love for learning, embraced challenges with enthusiasm, and built a strong sense of pride in themselves and representing their school.”
The Lamplighter School
With Innovative Projects, a new class introduced this year, teachers are cooking up STEAM learning for students in all grade levels.
First and second graders prepare various recipes while older students expand on that learning with design concepts, problem solving, and robots.
“These cooking projects allow students to improve their ability to follow multi-step directions while incorporating the math and measuring skills used in cooking,” said Stephen Scott, assistant head for lower school teaching and learning.
“Third graders conducted an ‘egg drop’ experiment that had themes of physics and design thinking,” he added. “Fourth graders have taken part in projects focused on robotics, which incorporates programming and problem solving.”
The Innovative Projects class is housed in the school’s state-of-the-art Eastin Family Innovation Lab and students utilize the building’s project room and Enrico Family Teaching Kitchen for cooking lessons, science experiments, and STEM challenges. Along with learning woodshop and robotics, the school’s teaching kitchen is a highlight among students.
Focusing on student discovery, the Innovation Lab’s open space learning environment is filled with light and is integrated into the landscape to support exploration alongside instruction. Featuring cypress wood planks and wrapped in copper, the interior and exterior allows an open concept for its learning spaces.
Trinity Christian Academy
At TCA, STEM learning often involves helping others, and students are flush with interesting ideas.
For example, Upper School students can gain real-world experience and hone leadership skills by joining Tech Stop. In the program, the students assist teachers and peers with computer issues.
Also, an honors-level engineering class open to seniors comes with a final project focused on designing and developing new devices to help a local children with special needs.
This project not only helps the children and their families by giving them useful tools and devices that don’t exist in the marketplace, but also teaches students that engineering skills can be used to improve the lives of those in the community, TCA officials said.
However, STEM learning doesn’t wait until high school. All lower school students in kindergarten through fourth grade attend a STEM lab, intentionally designed to provide opportunities for hands-on inquiry, exploration and discovery.
Wesley Prep
Fourth graders researching Texas ecoregions in their science and Texas history studies created posters and dioramas to model important plants, animals, and landforms in their areas of study.
Their research came to life when they focused on a specific animal native to their ecoregion and created a realistic habitat that would meet the live animal’s needs in the classroom.
Students recorded observations for the classroom animals over several weeks to study locomotion, behavioral adaptations, physical adaptations, body structure, and feeding habitats.
They also wrote ode, free verse, and haiku poems about the state park, plants, and animals in their ecoregions and performed them for their families and grandparents.
– Compiled by Claudia Carson-Habeeb and William Taylor
