McKinley STEMM Academy

Seventh grade students at the new McKinley STEMM Academy, under the direction of GLOBE teacher Cynthia Madanski, will collect and report atmosphere measurements according to GLOBE protocols.

Students in this project will be connected to scientists at the University of Toledo, UC Berkeley, Boston University, Tennessee State University, and NASA Langley Research Center in the common pursuit of real-world science. Students will obtain experience in collecting scientific data, and contribute their data to an online database used all over the world.  In doing so, scientists will gain additional data that otherwise would not be available to them. Students will have the tools and resources to ground truth reports scientists receive from satellites.

Using this atmosphere data, student will conduct inquiry research projects of their choosing. Climate studies will be conducted by analyzing weather averages and extremes. Lessons utilizing project based learning will build student understanding of Earth as a system, particularly focusing on the energy cycle and the atmosphere-land surface interaction. These inquiry research projects will be communicated and shared when students present their findings at a GLOBE Symposium after a year of work.

To evaluate the success of the project and impact of grant dollars, the teacher will design a pre- and post-assessment of student knowledge of scientific ways of thinking.  The results of the assessments, along with student research posters, will be shared with YLACES.

The grant provides needed measurement equipment and instruments.