Carrier Corporation STEM Grant
This STEM and Agriculture Lab project provides unique hands-on experiences to all students at Franklin Elementary School to stimulate their interest in science. It intends to build long-term and ongoing opportunities for students to be successful applying concepts to life experiences. Farm Futures describes that agriculture aligns with STEM learning, whether it’s the science behind farming itself, engineering and programming new technology to increase the efficiency of farming, or developing the mathematical concepts necessary to help engineer the new technology. It’s clear that agriculture involves all aspects of STEM, making it necessary to “boost the lagging K-12 Ag education.” A Gree research paper indicates that the U.S. economy will prosper with strong productivity gains in both the agricultural and industrial sectors with better trained professionals, and that work must begin in elementary and secondary schools. This will also include food-related as well as agriculture-related topics. Franklin Elementary school is an urban school, where very few students, if any, can experience the agriculture products growing cycle or how a farm works. The STEM and Agriculture Lab project is easy for teachers and students to use and helps to create a learning-friendly and productive school experience. The project provides hands-on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) activities for elementary students to inspire their interest in science, which will build in all students lifelong skills, and lead to health and a well-being living style. The project engages students in aligning knowledge to life experience that creating a cooperative and supportive learning environment to enhance overall students’ performance and success. Hands-on farming related tasks and assignments together with field trips and guest speakers from the farming community will be included in this project curriculum.
