Greater Latrobe students create video games, musical instruments in STEM programs

Greater Latrobe elementary students created their own video games and model miniature golf courses while their counterparts at the junior high will fashion homemade musical instruments.

Those STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) initiatives are among several programs at the district that received support through teacher grants recently awarded by the Greater Latrobe Partners in Education Foundation.

The foundation’s $500 grant helped provide materials for a two-week STEMtacular Makeathon camp that wrapped up June 24 at Latrobe Elementary School. More than 60 students in grades 2-5 from throughout the district took part in design and building challenges meant to spark creativity and draw upon teamwork.

“STEM is an important part of our students’ education,” said Sherry Durigon, an elementary-level STEM instructor who helped to organize the camp. “It provides opportunities for students to collaborate with each other, to strengthen critical thinking skills, to use ingenuity and creativity, and to build resilience as they apply knowledge and skills to create unique solutions to problems that are relevant to today’s world.”

Third graders made a variety of video games involving racing, navigating mazes or completing quests. The students also designed controllers for the games, which had to pass muster with players.

Second graders designed potential prosthetic devices for disabled animals. The fourth-grade project was construction of a scaled-down miniature golf course with a Latrobe theme.

Fifth graders used kits and an iPad app to build robotic animals with sensor-activated motion and sound that were displayed in a “petting zoo.”

When elementary students return for the fall semester, they’ll be able to explore principles of architecture with a set of KEVA Planks — maple building blocks purchased with a $190 foundation grant to Latrobe Elementary librarian Diana Lammert.

The blocks are meant to help younger students strengthen hand-eye coordination and measurement skills, while older students can investigate engineering feats ranging from ancient Egyptian pyramids to modern bridges.

“They can learn about balance and proportion,” Lammert said, noting the blocks can be paired with STEM-related literature on topics such as components of a house.

“They can think about how to design a house,” she said. “The planks give them a hands-on way to experience that.”

The planks will be used during a Wildcat Time period at the school, when students are free to create projects fueled by their imaginations.

During music classes at the junior high, Josh Jordan’s seventh- and eighth-grade students will have the opportunity to fashion unusual instruments by combining everyday objects with Makey Makey kits purchased with an $850 foundation grant.

Students will use alligator clips, a circuit board and USB cables to connect objects such as fruit, vegetables, metal utensils, or even themselves, to a computer. Touching the object has the same effect as pressing on a keyboard and triggering sounds.

“This type of project allows students to use their creativity to make nearly any item into an instrument that can produce various pitches based on where on the item the student touches,” Jordan said, adding it is meant to “encourage students to imagine, design, create, try and make something that could be new and possibly valued by others as meaningful.”

Even pencil drawings can be touched to create sounds, with the graphite serving as a conductor, Jordan said.

Teacher grants awarded

The foundation’s recent round of Greater Latrobe teacher grants totaled more than $8,000. Other grant recipients include:

● Jennifer Quinn, second-grade teacher at Mountain View Elementary, for flexible Chromebook seating;

● Acacia Houck, senior high broadcast and video production teacher, for a 4K video camera and accessories;

● Brooke Cichocki, music instructor at Baggaley Elementary, for classroom ukuleles;

● Marian Ferlin and Melanie Bartolozzi, for Egg-citement Egg-tension 2022, a program for incubating and hatching chicks at all three elementary schools;

● Tim Sheridan, senior high band director, for training to lead seminars as a peer facilitator;

● Anthony Seranko, Candace Bruno and Paige Alviani, Mountain View instructors, for a reading and cultural literacy program for sixth graders.