Spring Branch ISD Featured News

Thanks to grant money received from the Spring Branch Education Foundation and a supply drive by the Spring Shadows Neighborhood support group, a STEAM Studio is being outfitted in a former Science lab at the school.

STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) Challenges are being developed by the Terrace faculty to give students problems to solve.  The students will design, plan, and execute solutions in the STEAM Studio, either in groups or sometimes individually.

Third grade teacher, Rachel Marino, planned a prototype challenge last spring called Ship the Chip. This involved having her third graders design a package to ship one chip, hopefully without breakage, via interoffice mail to the SBISD Administration Building. Once the packages arrived, members of the SBISD Senior Staff team recorded themselves opening the packages for the student to watch the end-results of their solutions to the Ship the Chip challenge. Happily, all the chips arrived unbroken!

A drive to round up supplies needed for the challenges in the STEAM Studio was organized by the Spring Shadows Neighborhood group. A group of moms with young children, most not even school-aged yet, have come together to support their neighborhood schools. Through the group’s Facebook page, the word went out that things like Q-tips, paper towels, fabric and more were needed for the new STEAM Studio at Terrace Elementary. In short order, supplies flowed in along with $130 in donations given to purchase specific items.

Heather Morse of the Spring Shadows Neighborhood group collected and delivered the items to the school. “Becky Downs from John Knox Presbyterian Church saw our Facebook posting and invited us to come collect unused Sunday school supplies to use in the STEAM Studio,” said Ms. Morse. “We hit the jackpot there!”

A result of this door opening, the church has made further connections with Terrace Elementary to of support as the school offers more Personalized Learning experiences for the students through a School Redesign process. For six weeks this fall, a member of the church will be teaching Astronomy to small groups of interested students during an elective period on Fridays.

“This support from the Spring Shadows Neighborhood group, John Knox Presbyterian Church and others in the community could not have come at a better time,” said Terrace principal April Blanco. “As more people in the community get to know about the cool things we are doing at Terrace they want to get involved. It is helping to create a sense of school connectedness amongst our faculty, students and parents.”

Another Spring Shadows Neighborhood group parent, Sarah Janssen, has helped develop Kinder Wonderland at Terrace Elementary. Wonderland is a TEKS aligned structured play space for Kindergarten students in support of inquiry, social skills, oral language, and literacy.   Ms. Janssen recently rounded up some costumes and helped decorate the room to align with the Communities unit the Kindergarten students are currently studying.

“Sarah really helped our teachers pull this room together,” said Ms. Blanco. “The time she had to work on this really propelled the project forward since our teachers are so busy with other responsibilities.”