Elementary School Holds First K-5 STEAM Innovation Night

There were cotton ball catapults, shadow puppets, pendulum painting and meet-and-greets with nature’s decomposers (i.e. worms) at Crossroads’ first-ever K-5 STEAM Innovation Night. Families and friends were welcome to the May 21 event, held in myriad spaces on the Norton Campus and showcasing student ingenuity while offering engaging activities in science, technology, engineering, art and Makerspace design. To watch a video about the event, click here.

The event was conceived and organized by Elementary School Innovation & Technology Director Athena Walker, with assistance from specialists Anne Kessler and Zoe Cain (visual arts); Jo Barahona (innovation); Nacissé Demeska and Laura Rosales (science); and Courtney Rajan and Priscilla Hernandez (library).

“I’m really excited that families and community members at large get to see all the wonderful work that they’ve done, and I’m just really so proud of our students,” shared Athena.

Visitors to “the Bridge”—the Elementary School’s expansive second-floor landing—were treated to a cardboard city constructed by fourth graders, who demonstrated their structures’ technology features such as lights, motors, sounds and sensors. 

“We’ve worked really hard on our projects,” said fourth grader Siena Rawles.”It’s fun to have all of these people here to see what we’ve created.”

At the fifth grade robotics exhibition in the Joanie Martin Community Room, students showed off their mechanical creations designed to solve the real-world problem of ocean pollution. They used Hummingbird Kits to program robots that they built out of recycled materials. Their creations–—including singing fish and a trash-disposing whale—were all designed to either help clean the ocean or educate others on the importance of ocean conservation. 

In other spaces around campus, students showed off their 3D mazes, digestive system models and rainbow collages. Parent Michael Pilliod, a glass technology expert, led a workshop for attendees to create their own kaleidoscopes. In the Innovation Lab, guests took quizzes developed by third graders using the coding program Scratch.

“My Scratch project is a personality quiz,” explained Finn Edmonds “You’re going to answer questions, and according to which answer you click, then it’s going to tell you what kind of bird you are at the end.”

And what kind of bird is Finn?

“I’m a parakeet.”