Page 3 Students First Royall’s Bright Minds Club expands in its third year The Bright Minds Club has begun its 3rd year at Royall! This technology club is designed to foster collaboration, creativity, problemsolving, and technology skills in our students. Some components to be featured this year include: 3D printing, coding, the design process, Breakout Box, robotics, MakerSpace, LEGO Genius, and our zSpace Lab. Our 6th grade students also participate in a unique learning experience with a former Royall parent and GE Engineer, John Shurman. During this special unit of study, students delve deeper into the design process by designing a rubber-band car with the use of the program TinkerCad. They learn how to assess their design, determine flaws and rework the issues that they are having. Finally, using 3D printers, Royall students print the parts to their car, assemble them and test their build. They assess the function of the car by adjusting force, velocity and by measuring speed. Here is what our students said about why they like being a member of the club: 4th grader Kendall said: “I worked on OSMO last week and I realized that sometimes you make mistakes and it’s ok. I really want to be a Biomedical Engineer so I know I will make lots of mistakes so that I can help people and animals.” 5th grade student Owen said, “I like Bright Minds because we are doing work but it doesn’t really seem like work. I get to work with my friends on tasks every week. ” 6th grade students Jude and Keyshawn were surprised to learn that they would be working with a real engineer from GE. Jude said, “We are still in the blueprint stage of making the cars.” Keyshawn said, “ Mr. Shurman showed us how all of the parts of our design will fit together at the end and now we are starting to sketch our creations.” When the Principal of Royall Elementary School, Julie Smith, was asked about the impact of Bright Minds she said, “The only difference between 'I'm techie' and 'I'm not techie' is the willingness to click on things and see what happens. The Bright Minds Club at Royall offers our students numerous opportunities to click and take chances. When we foster these types of opportunities, our students become active and engaged participants in real-world learning. I have observed the most reluctant learners become persistent and excited about learning during Bright Minds”. Royall’s Bright Minds meets each Monday from 2-3 in 6 week rotations. Due to the overwhelming student interest, we are offering 3 sessions this year for grades 4-6 and 2 sessions for our Junior Bright Minds students in grades 2-3 which begins in the Spring. We are also adding an in-school experience for our kindergarten and first grade students this school year: Bright Minds in Training!
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