One Friday a month Loa Elementary changes its routine and has special day in which the students complete a series of STEAM activities. STEAM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in five specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics — in an interdisciplinary and applied approach. Rather than teach the five disciplines as separate and discrete subjects, STEAM integrates them into a cohesive learning paradigm based on real-world applications.

Over the past few months the students at Loa Elementary have experienced many fun and exciting activities. By learning about an integrated STEAM topic and then emphasizing the instruction through hands on activities, the students learn the topics and become excited about STEAM careers. This week the students had five hands on activities:

• Science – the students learned about force and built rockets and then applied force to the rockets
• Technology – the students learned about digital safety rules and digital/coding vocabulary
• Engineering – the students used common parts to build catapults and then they shot small pumpkins at a target
• Art – the students used different colored frosting to decorate cookies and then they ate the cookies
• Math – the students learned about pumpkins and then estimated the number seeds in a pumpkin. They then removed the seeds from the pumpkin and compared the estimated number of seeds to the actual number.

Though the United States has historically been a leader in the STEAM fields, fewer students have been focusing on these topics recently. According to the U.S. Department of Education, only 16 percent of high school students are interested in a STEAM career and have proven a proficiency in mathematics. Currently, nearly 28 percent of high school freshmen declare an interest in a STEAM-related field, but 57 percent of these students will lose interest by the time they graduate from high school. The emphasis of STEAM activities at Loa Elementary is designed to change these numbers and have an increased participation rate in STEAM classes in the middle and high school, which would translate into more students entering STEAM careers.