Democracy House, Middlesex County College’s service-learning program, recently collected more than 100 bags of food from the college community that it donated to Elijah’s Promise, the soup kitchen in New Brunswick. Pictured are Halimat Oshun of Iselin, left to right, Faculty Advisor Pattiann McMahon of South Plainfield, Coordinator Arianna Illa of South Brunswick, Cierrah Williams of Somerset, Mia Brenton of New Brunswick and Modepe Bello of Edison. PHOTO COURTESY OF THOMAS PETERSON EDISON — St. Matthew School has adopted Google Education and a STREAM initiative as purposeful experiences for students to prepare for their future as productive workforce members in the 21st century.
Piloted at a Catholic school in Brooklyn, New York, Google Education is a cloudbased platform in its second year of implementation.
“This initiative has been utilized by St. Matthew’s middle schoolers across all subject areas since the beginning of the 2015 school year, and will be expanded to grades 3 to 5 in the next month,” Principal Joan Sullivan said.
The children researched and wrote about Veterans Day using Google Docs and Google Slides for their presentations. They are working on another slide show featuring different holidays around the world.
Other components include Google Sheets, which is similar to Excel, and Google Calendar, which allows entries to be made by everyone included in the shared calendar. Google Forms may be used to take surveys or design academic challenges for others.
All student work is saved to the student’s Google Drive. Google Classroom is a central place where assignments are posted, handed in, graded and returned.
Another initiative is STREAM, an enrichment program for third to fifth graders, wherein St. Matthew’s has added components of religion and art to what most schools call STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) curricula.
The weekly program that began Nov. 17 requires students to actively build solutions to problems.
Students are grouped together with others from all three grades, and the groups rotate every nine weeks to a new teacher and a new challenge.
Each challenge begins with a planning and brainstorming session and the collection of recyclable materials. Then the building begins, with the teacher as the facilitator.
The current challenges are an adaptable vehicle that can function in two types of terrain, a survival backpack for any climate and a house designed to live off the grid.
“The teachers and I are very excited about the STREAM program because of the impact and influence this program can have on students’ attitude about learning and their own abilities,” Sullivan said.
Each challenge culminates with an open house where students’ work will be displayed for the school community.