2019 Jackson STEAM Fair – Innovative in Ideas

On March 28, Jackson School students proudly showcased class projects for the Annual STEAM Fair. With their creative and analytical approaches to class challenges, Jackson School K-6 students are engineering our future.

Projects focus on Designing Shelters, Building Bridges, Volcanoes, Boats that Float, Invasive Species, Electrical Engineering, Oil Spills, and Body Systems in Space. They are innovative in engineering, exciting in ecosystem exploration, and dynamic in experimentation. Teachers across disciplines engage students in different aspects of research and design. Professionals in the field visit classrooms to expand students’ knowledge and understanding of the topics.

Kindergarteners, in small groups, were tasked to design a shelter for themselves and one for their dogs. Students in Grade 1 built suspension bridges, each group adding a distinctive feature to separate it from the others. The combined one/two class studied facts about above ground and under water volcanoes, eruptions of Mt. Vesuvius and Mt. St. Helen’s, then created their own volcanoes. In Grade 2, each student built a boat with multiple mounted sails of different heights and dimensions. They then tested their crafts in a water table against a strong draft of air and tweaked sails to meet the goal of keeping their boats afloat and sailing in a straight line.

Third graders hunted down a number of invasive species from around the world, investigated the damage they inflict on a new habitat’s ecosystem, created Public Service announcements to alert neighbors of a particular species, and built camouflaged traps to catch a cane toad.Fourth graders were hardwired to create electrical circuits with a schematic diagram that utilized bulbs, wires, batteries, switches, buzzers, and a water trough. With these tools they designed a lightboard quiz to challenge visitors.

In fifth grade, students experimented with the cleanup of an oil spill in fresh water, the cost effectiveness of removing the oil, and the negative repercussions on the ecosystem following the cleanup.

Grade 6 took engineering into outer space by imagining, creating, and constructing 3D designs of prototypes built to counteract forces that detrimentally impact the cardiovascular, muscular, and nervous systems of astronauts in space travel.

The Annual Jackson School STEAM Fair is a much anticipated and always varied exploration into fields of scientific research, experimentation, engineering, and analysis.