STEM at Moriah exposes students to basic coding and scientific and engineering tools, that empower them to be creative and take themselves to higher levels.

Grade three began the year by learning coding using the Scratch program. Having worked on Scratch Jr. last year, the students began the year being introduced to higher-level block coding using Scratch. After learning some of the new block codes, the students made their first video game! By controlling and moving their character to catch an item, they score points. Some children, independently, took the game to the next level where if their character touched a different item, it lost points.

Students in grades four and five built on their Scratch coding skills learned last year. They began the year by creating their own Super Dodgeball video game. Some of their coding enabled them to move their character around the screen, grow their character in size when it earned points and shrink their character when it lost points. They were also very creative in “drawing” an object using Scratch tools.

The next STEM project for grades four and five was experimenting with snap circuits, a fun way to learn about electronics and engineering. The students built circuits by snapping into place lamps, motors and wires.

Grade five took their experience with snap circuits to another level. After building a series circuit that divided power between two loads, the students were challenged into transforming their circuit into a parallel circuit that separately powered the two loads. It is exciting to see the creativity and teamwork the students exhibit to attain success.

In recognition of computer science week, grades three, four and five participated in the Hour of Code made available by code.org. Excitement permeated the Moriah STEM lab as every student tackled the coding challenges of Angry Birds, Minecraft, Flappy Birds and Moana. While the beginning tasks were relatively easy, as the levels increased so did their difficulty. The students needed to think through the problems faced to find workable solutions. Some students collaborated with each other discussing options to find success. It was wonderful watching students engage each other, assist each other and be so dedicated to the task at hand. Grades three, four and five are now continuing working on courses on code.org. They are creating code, using sequencing, loops and nested loops, as well as debugging given challenges, with great success.