There is a surge of science excitement happening on Marymount of Santa Barbara’s campus.
This enthusiasm for science is manifesting itself in a physical way through the creation of a new Creative Design and Engineering Center that will serve all of Marymount’s JK-8th grade students. This new center will be a flexible space that facilitates collaborative and cross-curriculum learning. In some ways it will be like a permanent maker-space, a space that lets students work “big” and in collaborative groups.
It is a space that Marymount Middle School science teacher Jannine Tuttle describes as “a space that encourages innovation and builds knowledge, a constructivist learning space where students can learn by doing, experimenting, tinkering, and playing with materials until they figure out how things work. Very importantly the space will be used by teachers across the curriculum, science, of course, but also art, technology, math, English, history, music and drama. All of these areas of learning will be enhanced and overlap in the new center.”
Marymount Middle School students have the science bug in a big way. Working in small teams, Marymount seventh-graders are creating games that teach science concepts to kids who are chronically ill and frequently in the hospital. This effort is a part of Marymount’s science curriculum called Creative Design and Engineering during which seventh-grade student teams follow a process of trial and error coined by Stanford’s Institute of Design called Design Thinking.
In the Design Thinking process, current seventh-grade students work with pediatric health experts from Cottage Hospital and the nonprofit organization Teddy Bear Cancer Foundation to refine prototype games that deliver independent learning opportunities to their hospital-bound peers. Using tools such as 3D printers, Marymount student-created apps, and Scratch, a programming language developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) to help them, Marymount seventh-grade students meet with Cottage’s health experts and Teddy Bear Cancer Foundation staff regularly to refine their products. Their games are now available to students across the country online.
The eighth-graders are demonstrating their science enthusiasm in a different way. The Marymount eighth-graders’ Creative Design and Engineering curriculum is a project that requires them to work in teams with field experts and refine prototypes also using Design Thinking and new technology. In their case, the Marymount eighth-graders are designing limb prostheses for Hollywood productions, specifically for Hollywood stunt scenes. Eighth-graders are working with two different stunt actors to refine their products and make them as life-like and real as possible. This exciting project is in addition to regular Marymount’s eighth-grade science curriculum that includes robotics, electric circuitry and hands-on physics experimentation.
Marymount’s Lower School students are definitely not left out. Starting in junior kindergarten, Marymount focuses on inquiry-based science learning. Marymount’s youngest students are learning to code and program. The third-graders are particularly enthusiastic about their Lego Robotics program, while the fifth-graders’ SumoBots (Sumo wrestling robots) are something all fifth-graders see as a crowning achievement and rite of passage before heading up the hill to the Middle School campus and more science opportunities.
Tuttle describes the progression of the robotics program this way: “Students have also been building on the Lower School robotics programming by creating Vex IQ robots that challenge students to program, apply mathematics, strategic problem-solving, and encourage higher order thinking.”
On Saturday, May 30 from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Marymount will be hosting its second Design Thinking workshop so that students across Santa Barbara can experience what Marymount students are so excited about. This free Creativity, Engineering and Coding Come Alive workshop is open to current fifth- through seventh-graders. No prior knowledge necessary. Please RSVP to info@marymountsb.org.
Marymount is an independent coeducational school, junior kindergarten through 8th grade, on a picturesque 10-acre campus nestled on the Santa Barbara Riviera.
— Molly Seguel is the admissions director for Marymount of Santa Barbara.