BY LILLY CHAPPEL
Southside Elementary
STEM Night on March 4 brought students and parents together at Southside Elementary to tour the campus and engage in different activities that the students have been working on since August.
From special guests, Clay Electric Cooperative, Starke Dance Academy and Strickland’s Scoop, our families learned about safety around electricity, how to make a human machine and were introduced to an owl monkey named Cachura.
The tour continued through classrooms where they learned how to make a cloud in a bottle, program robots in a race, explore their imaginations with blocks, become engineers with Keva Planks, build houses and work in a team to stack cups.
Fun was had by all, and students who completed the tour were gifted with a building toy to take home.
On March 14-16, fifth-grade students attended a STEM camp from STARBASE out of Jacksonville. Director Bruce Griner, LaShanette Campbell and Kristen Whitney led this three-day camp here at Southside. During the camp, students learned how to create a space pod for the astronauts on a CAD computer program and designed a special protective seat to use for their astronaut Eggbert as the shuttle comes in for a landing.
Students observed the landing then came up with different ideas for their design. Two out of the 20 teams had a successful landing with no injuries. Because failure leads to more learning, students learned life lessons as well. As a bonus, Ms. Norman, Mrs. Harrell, and Mrs. Chappell also took on the challenge and successfully landed their astronaut.
STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. This is the first year of the program and we would like to extend a huge thank you to all that have supported this first year at Southside. The following have been a huge part of the success of the program: NEFEC, Clay Electric, Bradford Education Foundation, Southside administrators Mrs. Melvin and Ms. Morgan, Bradford County Schools administration, and friends and families that are too numerous to mention. Can’t wait to see what the future holds! Stay tuned. I see great things happening here at Southside!
