This project funded by

Pittsburgh, PA -- Second Round Single-Day Workshop

Grade Level:
2-8
Location:
Homestead, PA
About the School:

This project was made possible with funding from the Arconic Foundation. Arconic Foundation’s mission is to support non-profit partners who advance STEM Education and Workforce Development in Arconic communities. This is the second time that Pittsburgh has been a location for an Arconic workshop with CE.  CE co-planned with workshop with the Allegheny Intermediate Unit to get a sense of how the initial workshop had impacted their curriculum and hands-on instruction.

This workshop was the second visit that CE has made to Pittsburgh as part of this cycle of funding from Arconic. Thus, the outreach focused on reaching more teachers from the same school districts that had already been reached in the initial two-day series. This workshop, however, was one day and focused primarily on building content background for teachers to use in their professional learning communities to build deeper curriculum and gain insight into how to use hands-on materials. In total, 24 teachers from 17 school districts and 21 schools from across the region were in attendance.

Teachers began the day with energy fundamentals and solar circuits, transitioning into a lunchtime talk by Sara Walker, a Clean Energy Advisor from Duquesne Light. In the afternoon, teachers worked in teams to select variables for optimizing the functionality of wind turbines and designed their own turbine blades. At the end of the session, teachers selected from four different science kit types to bring specific materials back to their schools. These were shipped in the following weeks.