Students in Maggie Hatesohl's and Samantha Kempf's STEAM classes at Maize Intermediate School spent time in September and October working on an illustration of themselves, but with a twist: The drawings had to look like a Tim Burton movie version of themselves.
It is, after all, that spooky time of the year.
“We were looking at characteristics of his art,” said Hatesohl, who teaches fifth graders. “Every artist has a different style. We also got to talk a little bit about stop motion animation and claymation and how they make those movies.”
Everyone’s drawing turns out different, Hatesohl said, and the lesson teaches students to think beyond copying a drawing that already exists.
“And for some kids, this is their first experience with art,” Kempf said. “They’ve all still done a good job, even if it’s not their thing. They’ve understood that this is a good exposure project.”
Click to view a photo gallery of students and their artwork.
This school year is the first year that there have been teachers dedicated to STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) in the five elementary and two intermediate schools in Maize USD 266. This is Hatesohl’s fifth year teaching and Kempf’s 14th year teaching, and both are new to STEAM teaching.
“When this job opened up, I was super pumped up about it to see what kind of growth we could make with the students,” said Kempf, who teaches sixth grade.
Hatesohl is working on her master’s degree in STEM education, and this area has always appealed to her.
“I have always loved science. And along with that, I was really interested in the problem-solving aspect of STEAM and identifying what are the real-world applications. It gets beyond ‘Read this textbook’ and moves into looking at ‘What does this look like in the real world?’ ‘What are the careers?’”
Kempf is looking forward to watching students use more forward thinking in STEAM, approaching unique problems, drawing plans, or collaborating on how they’re going to work together to solve a problem.
Hatesohl is looking forward to students exploring the engineering design process. How do engineers actually solve problems? What are the criteria that they are presented with a problem? What are the constraints of the problem?
As a whole, it is exciting to see students learning multiple ways to solve problems.
Read the STEAM series
- Full STEAM ahead: Students learn about science, technology, engineering, art, and math in new classroom spaces
- Meet Maize South Intermediate STEAM teacher James Buchanan
- Meet Maize Central Elementary School STEAM teacher Diana Meister
- Meet Maize Elementary School STEAM teacher Jason Ramey
- Meet Maize South Elementary School STEAM teacher Olivia Hugo
- Meet Pray-Woodman Elementary School STEAM teacher Christina Eck
- Meet Vermillion Elementary School STEAM teacher Melissa Love
