The goal of the STEM experience at DLEACS is to maximize, grow and connect skills through practice. In doing so, all students have access to robust and connected learning experiences. Our second-grade teachers created an innovative ecology lesson that summoned parent assistance for students to complete the assignment. 

The results? A masterful pathway to create projects individualized according to each child's own interests.

Students and their parents created dioramas of animal habitats to illustrate the relationship of living things to each other and to what’s around them. Projects ranged from tropical tigers in the jungle to polar bears living on the ice. The imagination was at work for students and their families as the dioramas featured elaborate details for snow, sand and even real grass.

The collaborating teachers prioritized time for reflection and peer exchange among and between lower grades. These practices promote active, inquiry-based learning to build students’ competence and self-efficacy in STEM; deepen their understanding of their current and future potential to solve complex problems; and strengthen their social-emotional skills, including persistence, resiliency, creativity, problem-solving and collaboration.

Kudos to our teachers, junior scholars and their families for a job well done!