Fifth grade students at Bristow Run Elementary School participated in an ice-breaking virtual science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) hockey event. The Washington Capitals and EVERFI, a technology company that produces digital courses for K-12 students, sponsored the event utilizing the EVERFI's Future Goals program, a hockey-themed STEM curriculum.
Students took part in EVERFI's curriculum through Clever, developing their math and science skills through online, interactive hockey math games, to reinforce key concepts like scientific thinking and data analysis, while also exposing students to foundational STEM concepts through real-world applications.
Kelly Cortez, a gifted resource teacher at Bristow Run, and Geoff Nenni, a physical education teacher at the school, collaborated on this innovative approach to integrating math, science, and hockey.
"Geoff came into my gifted classroom during my fifth-grade classes. He attended twice a week for about six weeks," said Cortez. "Together we would co-teach the math concept as it directly applied to hockey. They even had their hockey player avatars and locker rooms," said Cortez.
Each interactive lesson included an instructional video and covered a fifth-grade math concept, such as area, perimeter, angle measurement, parallel lines, perpendicular lines, radius, and circumference.
"The students enjoyed the program so much that we have now assigned the Future Goals
science lessons as an independent center option for my students. We were piloting this with my fifth-grade gifted students this year to see if this is something the entire fifth grade could enjoy next year," said Cortez.
