By Jonathan Coronel
Keeping adolescent scholars engaged is a daily struggle for middle school teachers. Restless students’ feet fidget while their minds wander in every direction as they wonder why in the world they have to learn things such as cell models and basic physics.
Often, students stare at the page and memorize the material just to get the grade they need on the test, discarding the seemingly useless knowledge afterward.
Kyrene Middle School, for its part, is trying to change this, implementing new learning opportunities to engage its students with applicable, hands-on activities.
For the first time this past year, Kyrene offered students the chance to join Coding Club. Made possible by a State Farm grant, Coding Club meets once a week and teaches students the basics of different coding language like Java and HTML.
Students in Coding Club apply their knowledge to create their own personal website that explains who they are and why they joined the club.
According to club adviser and multimedia instructor Michael Davison, the students are already learning to apply their knowledge to other real world situations, like the time when their club pizza party was in jeopardy due to some technical difficulties.
“Something went wrong with the online ordering system that Mr. Cupp (Dean of Student Learning) was using, so we made it a teaching moment and our club designed an online ordering form that worked better,” says Davison.
“It’s safe to say their new ordering form was Cupp-proof,” Cupp says laughingly.
Just next door to the computer room where Coding Club meets is Kyrene’s innovative Smart Lab classroom.
The purpose of the lab is to provide hands-on learning to bring the textbook lessons to life for students. Students can use the computer programs available to design models of cells or print nets of geometric shapes to help them visualize their latest math lesson.
K’NEX building sets abound and students use them to construct models of everything from water wheels to motorized cars.
One student casually turns on a car he built, causing it to zoom across a table. He explains this was a high-speed car he made, contrasting it with his other creation: a big, lumbering vehicle that he says he created with the intention of making it slower but more powerful.
Other students proudly display their large towers and buildings created with the K’NEX while one uses the lab’s heart monitor before and after exercise to conceptualize what he learned in his science class about the functions of the heart.
Needless to say, the Smart Lab is many students’ favorite place to learn, and is utilized nearly every day according to Principal Sheryl Houston.
“The Smart Lab is rarely empty. Our teachers are great about reserving the room and planning their lessons ahead of time so that when their classes come in the Smart Lab, they really do maximize the hands-on learning students can experience.”
