STEAM Robotics and Fine Arts offered at FPMS – Times-Journal

There are new courses being offered at Fort Payne Middle School and Fort Payne High School for the 2022-2023 school year. The Times-Journal has been showcasing these courses so the community can be informed about the opportunities available to our students. This week, we will look at the visual and media arts/drama courses at Fort Payne Middle School, taught by Amy Smith, as well as the new STEAM/Robotics courses at Fort Payne Middle School, taught by Regan McClung.

s part of Fort Payne City Schools commitment to preparing students to succeed in a challenging world tomorrow, the Board of Education and Superintendent recently funded a refurbished state-of-the-art STEAM Lab at Fort Payne Middle School and is providing a full-time instructor of STEAM Robotics and Computer Science at FPMS in 2022-2023.

This commitment to the future growth of our community includes three new STEAM Robotics and Computer Science course offerings this Fall.

STEAM represents a project-based learning initiative that integrates science, technology, engineering, arts, and math into one classroom for a comprehensive approach to each students education.

STEAM Robotics courses help to better prepare students for STEAM careers and build not only technical skills, but the problem-solving, collaboration, and innovation experience students need to be successful in life and even create a better world for all of us.

The changing speed of technology and challenges facing our world make STEAM robotics and computer science education an important and critical need for our students. Seventh and eighth-grade students will have the option of taking a STEAM Robotics elective course for one nine weeks period this year.

Sixth graders applied for this course in the spring, and those applicants will take this one-semester course for their daily elective. The STEAM Robotics elective will be a fundamentals sampler course that includes friendly competition, as teams of students engage in research, problem-solving, coding, and engineering - developing their mechanical engineering skills and coding skills with a LEGO robot that navigates the missions of a robot game.

The course will blend online and unplugged non-computer activities to teach students computational thinking, problem solving, programming concepts, and digital citizenship.

Next, seventh and eighth graders may sign up to take Computer Science Discoveries, which is a full-year introductory computer science survey course.

The course takes a wide lens on computer science by covering topics such as programming, physical computing, HTML/CSS, and data. Students are empowered to create authentic artifacts and engage with CS as a medium for creativity, communication, problem-solving, and fun. This full-year course is in place of morning electives.

Finally, seventh and eighth graders who took Computer Science Discoveries last year may sign up to take Computer Science and Society, a full-year course designed to enhance middle school students knowledge of computer science and how it affects society.

The course includes Computing Innovations, App Development with a Purpose, Ethics and Cybersecurity, and Micro:bit Projects. This full-year course is in place of morning electives.

All of these course offerings bring the newest language of creativity to the students: CODING!

STEAM Robotics and Computer Science empower students to engage with computer science as a medium for creativity, communication, problem-solving, and fun!

Regan McClung is a 4th-8th grade STEAM robotics and computer science teacher at Fort Payne Middle School.

Fine Arts at Fort Payne Middle School is a new program that began in January 2022.

Currently, all students, grades 6-8, are being serviced in a visual arts class where they learn art history, elements and principles of art, and artistic vocabulary.

The students create visual works of art based on the topic of instruction for that week.

This school year, we hope to grow the program to include beginner and intermediate-level classes in both visual arts and media arts. The media arts course would consist of graphic design, presentation design, and video production.

FPMS is also offering a new drama class for 7th and 8th-grade students where they explore different genres and historical works while also learning the fundamentals of performing to an audience. The students also gain experience in elements of set design, costume design, performance makeup, and stage lighting for productions. This school year, we hope to be able to present a full-scale production to our community.

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STEAM Robotics and Fine Arts offered at FPMS - Times-Journal