FMS fourth grade students participated in a joint STEAM project with STEM teacher, Colleen Williams, and music teacher, Tyson Valyou. The students explored coding and creating instruments using Scratch, a Makey Makey, and recycled materials that are either insulators or conductive. Conductive materials allow electrons to pass through them.
Students started by decoding a familiar song in class using an xylophone. Then they notated it and wrote a code in Scratch to create an interface that played that song. Finally, students went to the STEM lab to design and build an instrument with recycled materials. The students experimented with materials that were insulators and were conductive. The conductive materials connect to the Makey Makey to create a circuit that can trigger the code they wrote in Scratch. They finished the project with a gallery walk on the stage where all the students played their instruments for each other.