Patriots STEM Elementary

All students at Patriots have direct experiences with STEM professionals, environments, and content on a monthly basis. Students participate in clubs, field trips, STEM competitions, and classroom guest speakers. 

At Patriots, we have clubs once a month during the school day to ensure participation for all students. Each grade level holds club day at a different time so that instructional coaches can assist and offer specialized STEM clubs in addition to teacher offered clubs. A full list of clubs offered during club times is provided on the evidence link below. 

Each grade level participates in at least two field trips throughout the year. It is a requirement at Patriots that at least one of the trips is STEM based. Our students visit Charlotte Motor Speedway, Hendrick Motorsports, Discovery Place, Daniel Stowe Botanical Gardens, and many other science and engineering environments where they have direct contact with the STEM professionals and work environments. 

We have a Science Olympiad team that meets after school. We have such a high demand for this club that we enter two teams at the local Science Olympiad competitions held at our sister school, Coltrane-Webb. Last year after the competition, we took this group to Carowinds for Engineering Day. At that field trip, students met the engineers that built the world's largest gigacoaster, Fury 365. They were able to ask the engineers questions and even ride the new roller coaster! We also partner with Bricks 4 Kidz, a program that comes to Patriots on Monday afternoons to engage kids in a Lego and robotics club. 

Another opportunity we provide all students is guest speakers in the classroom. Our STEM pipeline has a database of all our community partners and families that work in STEM fields. We pull from this database to bring STEM professionals into the classroom and allow students time to talk with professionals and ask questions about careers and the importance and application of STEM.