WHAT IS STEM CLUB SR?
STEM Club Sr is Charger Robotics’ STEM Club geared for middle-school students that is 5 days once a week for 2 hours. For the first 4 days, the students are given a real-world problem, like water filtration or landfill overuse, to research and create a solution for. Working in groups, students then build and test their solution and continue to refine their work until it’s effective and is approved by a member of Charger Robotics as realistic and efficient. On the fifth day, just like STEM Club Jr, we bring in a robot or two to demonstrate what we do, talk about STEM careers, and how STEM is involved with our everyday lives. The creation of STEM Club Sr is focused on building the foundation for FIRST teams, in the same way that STEM Club Jr does, and expanding our middle school outreach.
We had our first STEM Club Sr in the fall of 2019, and we are currently working on setting up our second one for Spring 2020, after competing in our 2020 competitions. The next STEM Club Sr will be with a middle school that participated in Girls FIRST Initiative, to create a stronger connection and interest.
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STEM Club Sr. also provides a more direct connection between students and our team. Middle school students are only 1-2 years away from being able to join Charger Robotics, making it an ideal age for us to engage them in STEM and introduce our team and what we do.
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SAMPLE SCHEDULE
Challenge is introduced; students form groups and begin research
Students finish research and as a group, start early designing. They create a list of materials as well.
The engineering and testing process begins; the students begin building their solutions.
WEEK 4
Continuing to test their projects, the students refine them as they find things to improve upon.
WEEK 5
All groups present their solution and answer questions.