LITERAL
(a) I, Joseph Galarza, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.
(b) My Mentor, Mrs. Negrette, was the driving force, or, in this case, my most important resource, to help me complete my second independent component. She allowed me, once again, to use her classroom and her students for presentations and activities. She also served as a connection to other teachers as well, allowing me to do presentations and activities with other classrooms as well.
(c) Log of Hours Completed
(d) My second Independent Component was much like my first. I planned, tested, and executed numerous activities and presentations with four different classrooms of children at my mentorship, Ekstrand Elementary School. The presentations were created to provide a basis of understanding for STEM, and a "Stem Bingo" sheet went along with it. After this, I led activities that were related to the four letters of STEM. For example, in one particular class, I led a mentos & diet coke experiment to demonstrate the Science component of STEM. I had that classroom use computers to play math video games online, completing the Technology and Math portions, and made paper airplanes with them to learn about aerodynamics to fulfill the E piece.
Throughout my time spent with the children, their enthusiasm towards learning about STEM and towards the activities we completed, seem to get stronger as we continued along, which helped me to stay on track and continue my project.
INTERPRETIVE
As mentioned above, I led numerous activities with the students. A few of the activities completed during the span of these 30 hours, I had completed during my previous Independent Component. However, I spent many hours researching, testing, and executing new activities and projects to do with the classrooms. This website helped me greatly in finding new experiments, and how to teach them at a child's level. Although it seems like my Independent Component was all fun and games(which, honestly, it was!), there were some stressful times. At one point during my Independent Component, I had three days scheduled in a row, with three different classrooms, where I was to be giving a presentation and leading activities with. As soon as I finished one, I was onto the next, with different kids and somewhat different activities. I am very glad I was able to complete my component the way I did, however. I got to hang out with kids, and do fun science experiments and activities with kids, while helping out my project at the same time. It doesn't get better than that!
Link to "Independent Component Part 6"
Link to "Independent Component Part 7"
Link to "Independent Component Part 8"
Link to "Independent Component Part 9"
APPLIED
How did the component help you answer your EQ or support one or more of your answers. Please include specific examples to illustrate how it helped.
My independent component helped me to solidify my best answer to my Essential Question. After reading all about hands-on learning in my research, and how beneficial it is to children's learning, I decided it would be a great idea to test it out myself! And that is exactly what I did. I gave the kids activities where they could go in and do the work themselves, and observe how they enjoyed it, or whether they truly enjoyed STEM-based education that way.
In the GATE class I worked with, I allowed kids to make the tallest structure they could out of scraps of assorted materials given to them. During and after the activity, the kids were beaming with delight, and were talking all about structures, and what might work, and what wouldn't. Many of them made the connection to the STEM information we talked about previously. They said things like, "This is what an engineer does!" or, "This is fun!". I felt as though these remarks, and the enthusiasm they had for each activity, showed that they enjoyed STEM. I can only hope that these positive experiences help them down the road, when they remember how much fun they had being an engineer, when they begin to choose their careers.
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