Sandy Springs Education Force creates and funds targeted programs that educate, inspire and prepare public school students in Sandy Springs for a competitive world. For example: after-school STEAM clubs, After-School All-Stars, Link With a Leader, Mini Libraries, SAIL, After-School North Springs, the SSEF Virtual Tutoring Program, the SSEF Summer Book Club and much more.
Please enjoy the following videos showcasing how five schools have been using their STEAM Showcase Legacy Grants. We so appreciate our sponsors for making these opportunities possible.
We invite you to view a compilation video that includes highlights from 4 of these programs:
Compilation Video Illustrating Students Benefitting from SSEF STEAM Legacy Grants
Please feel free to learn more about the programs from the descriptions and longer versions of several of the videos linked below.
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| Riverwood High School. To support the school’s Farm to Table Garden, Biology and Environmental Science classes, Riverwood used their STEAM Legacy Grant to add three Langstroth beehives in a small enclosed apiary. The apiary is housed in a fenced area near the retention pond and maintained by the bee squad (24 students and club sponsors). The three beehives increased the pollination of the school’s existing garden and give all students an opportunity to understand the importance of pollinators to our ecosystem. The garden is also an official Monarch Waystation! While the bee squad members keep the hives alive, harvest honey and learn how to be beekeepers, all 9th graders and 12th graders have the opportunity to have a hands-on experience, and learn about the life cycle and dynamics of a honeybee colony. The 12th graders learn the importance and ecological role honeybees play in the environment. All students are able to take field trips to the hive and pollinator garden as the club provides veils through the use of the grant funds. | North Springs High School. The SpartaBots Robotics Team at North Springs uses their STEAM Legacy Grant to support their after school-club that participates in the FIRST Tech Challenge. Each year, FIRST releases a new “game.” Teams have a limited amount of time to design, build, program and test a robot to compete in this game. Students are required to meticulously document their design process in an engineering notebook. Once competitions begin, the team competes against other high schools. Robots improve as the season progresses. The team communicates with teams from other schools to give suggestions and receive feedback leading to design changes and adjustments to the robots. As the season progresses, this leads to higher scores. The North Springs SpartaBots won first place for the Design Award and third place for the Inspire Award (all-around) in region competition! Not only have they competed all season remotely, but they were also the only public school winning awards at Regionals. They advanced to the state competition for the first time ever in the 2019-2020 season, and are again advancing to the state competition this year. | |
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| Spalding Drive Elementary. The STEAM Legacy Grant enabled the continuation of the “Full STEAM Ahead” after-school program. Spalding Drive runs several popular clubs, including: Drone, Art, Engineering and Photography Clubs. The Drone Club gives students the opportunity to fly and maneuver drones. The Art Club allows students to be creative while making take-home pieces of art. In the Engineering Club, students build and launch homemade rockets. Lastly, in the Photography Club, students use a digital camera to take photos around the school campus and then learn how to edit them with photoshop software. | Ison Springs Elementary. The STEAM Legacy Grant was used to provide devices to meet the objectives of building wireless circuits that control student-created robots. Students also have been learning about basic coding language and how to create simple computer games using code.org, scratch.mit.edu and micro:bits. | |
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| Woodland Elementary. 70% of students at Woodland Elementary School were virtual this year due to the pandemic. The grant from SSEF allowed WES to bring students together virtually by having their very first STEM eBook clubs! Students were placed in book clubs based on interests in various STEM fields, and they researched the career in the eBook club. One of the best things about the book club was that the students had, and continue to have, access to the books as long as they wish The students loved being able to learn different things from each other and discussing the information they read in the books. This allowed students to feel as if they were physically at the school. . |
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