SUMTER, S.C. — Alice Drive Elementary School’s Invention Exposition aims to prepare fifth grade students for the future of Science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM.
On Tuesday, Sumter students showed off the projects they’ve been working on for months.
"I designed a squirrel-proof bird feeder where if the squirrels jump onto it, they’ll slide off," 5th grader Parker Wood explained. "I was really nervous [about the exhibition] but then after a few questions, I realized that it wasn’t that bad."
Students, families and community members gathered to see the STEM-related projects on display. In September, students had to find a problem that affected their daily lives. Next, they had to build a solution to it.
"We just kind of took the old school science project to the next level and we made it more real and more suitable for today’s world," math teacher Kim Johnston explained.
Johnston says preparing students for a future in STEM is important
"I love that our students are thinking deeply, they’re looking at real problems around them, and they’re thinking of ways that they can make a difference," Johnston shared. "We can get our students excited about STEM now as 8, 9, 10-year-olds, and then they feed into our middle school, which is Alice Drive Middle School, which is also a national accredited STEM school, and that gets them even more prepared for what’s to come."
The project also taught students like Emily Brawner the value of resiliency.
"The problem was we were losing games and giving our mom migraines because we were all arguing about where games were," Brawner explained about her invention. "The biggest thing that I learned was probably you're going to make mistakes and that’s okay!"
Wood tells me that was also his favorite part.
"It was learning from my mistakes and having to redo it," he smiled.
Johnston says next year, the school hopes to send one of its students to compete in a national invention exhibition.
"Next year we are really gonna take it super seriously and send one of our sweet children to the nationals," Johnson told me. "That’s our hope."