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UPDATE: Mother Teresa School implementing STREAM in classrooms

Apr 29, 2019 | 4:15 PM

 

edicine Hat, AB– Mother Teresa School in Medicine Hat is taking a new approach to learning this upcoming September.

The school will fully adopt STREAM, a program that uses Science, Technology, Reading & Religion, the Arts & Humanities, and Mathematics as an entree point for helping students become critical thinkers and be more engaged on how they learn.

The school has been piloting STREAM learning in four classrooms every morning and is getting ready to launch the program for the rest of the school for the new year.

Tonight the school is hosting an open house from 6-8 p.m. to talk about the program and will have student presentations. More will be held in May and June after members of the schools staff attend a conference on the program in New Jersey.

Principal Erika Bodnaruk says that STREAM was introduced at Mother Teresa to help students be more engaged with their learning.

“Medicine Hat Catholic recognized in a student enrolment and retention committee that we needed to do something different,” she said. “My saying is we have to stop taking square kids and pounding them into round holes because we knock off their best parts and so what they did in this retention and enrolment committee was decide that this was something new.”

According to Bodnaruk, STREAM allows students to connect ideas and illustrate what they learned in one subject by means of another.

“The children are given a chance to show what they know through each of the acronyms of STREAM and they can pick each day, they are encouraged to try do different ones each time, but we’ve noticed that the engagement level and them understanding, we’ve had a little student in grade one even hold up his hand all excited one day and say ‘today I’m thinking like an engineer’.”

Fifth grade teacher Cody Young, one of the teachers already using STREAM in his classroom, says that the program is a more natural way for kids to learn.

“We took a math lesson to do with fractions. And we related it to recipes and mixtures in science.” He said. “We even had a discuss about a dinner date with the 12 Disciples and they had to use fractions to tell me what they ordered, and what they were wearing.”
 

The Alberta Education curriculum will still be followed, but it’s in the approach in how it’s taught that is different.

“It doesn’t put the fear of ‘oh I’m going to fail this test’ or ‘oh I don’t really like this protect’. It’s more about figure out how these things we are learning about in school relate to life and how it will effect them in the working world that one day they are eventually going to get into.” Young said. “And if we can teach them these things now then we are well on our way.”

Bodnaruk also noted that as part of incorporating STREAM into the school, the Catholic Board of Education has approved a renovation to the current library to create a Learning Commons. The budget given is up to $94,000 and will create a space for students to collaborate and work together outside of the traditional classroom setting.