GREEN RIVER — Fifth grade students at Washington Elementary School in Green River recently put their S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) and computer science skills to work to create ornaments for Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon’s Christmas Tree.
This year, all the students at Washington Elementary are being taught S.T.E.M. and computer science, and in computer science the students are learning about coding.
The Junior Kindergarten through third grade students are using the Scratch Jr platform. The fourth and fifth grade students are using Tynker. The coding at this age focuses on using blocks to code with. Along with coding, the S.T.E.M. classes use curriculum through Project Lead The Way.
While the younger students were learning new skills, Washington’s 5th grade class got to utilize their skills in a unique way by participating in making ornaments for the Governor’s Christmas Tree. The students used Tinkercad to design their ornaments and the 3-D printers to print them.
Mrs. Tara Taliaferro, S.T.E.M. teacher, received the information from her fellow S.T.E.M. teachers across the district and she then approached her Principal, Mrs.Covey, and classroom teacher Mrs. Denise Clingenpeel to see how they could participate in this opportunity.
The student’s started with designing their project on paper. This is the engineering part of S.T.E.M. The technology part was using Tinkercad, a free 3-D modeling program, used to make their drawings go from 2-D to 3-D.
After the project was printed, the students painted their projects.
The students finished their project on Tuesday, November 24, and were then sent out that afternoon to Cheyenne.
The lighting of the tree will take place virtually this year on December 10, 2020, at 10 am. The lighting ceremony can be watched live here.
