Innovation Projects with Community Impact

Avon elementary school students love innovation classes. They've taken an especially keen interest in their classes because their hands-on STEM projects are also making a positive impact on the community. The following is a summary provided by Innovation Coordinator Amanda Moore, lightly edited for this space.

We have had a great year of community projects in Innovation!

This year we started a community project in each of our elementary grade levels. Our goals were to help students recognize that they can be change-makers in their world and to increase relevance in learning (part of our Avon Instructional Model). Here is a quick overview of our projects.

K - Build bird feeders to place around the school
1 - ‎Build bee hotels for our community
2 - Create geode sun catchers and share some with local retirement homes
3 - Donate boxes of food and use them for forces and motion project
4 - Donate denim and use it to create real shoes for children in Uganda in collaboration with our partner nonprofit Sole Hope
5 - Investigate water in our Outdoor Learning Center and possible pollution sources, campaign to protect water AND Drink only water and milk for two weeks and donate saved money for a clean water well in Kenya

This year, third grade students across all eight of our elementary schools came together for a unique Innovation project that combined science learning with service to our community. Each school collected donated boxed food items, which students then used to design and build large-scale chain reactions—similar to a line of dominoes—to explore the science of forces and motion.

Students timed chained reactions, looking for patterns in motion and discovering how pushes and pulls cause objects to move and transfer energy from one box to the next. Classrooms were filled with excitement as students problem-solved, made adjustments, and celebrated successful chain reactions. As the number of donated boxes grew, students were able to see the real impact of their work and make a meaningful connection between their learning and giving back. At the conclusion of the project, all collected food was donated to the Mary Lee Maier Community Pantry, supporting families across our community.

This project is part of a larger commitment across our district. This year, all elementary students in grades K–5 participated in a community-focused Innovation experience. From building bird feeders, to stocking school food pantries, to helping raise funds for a clean water well in Kenya, students are learning how engineering can be used to solve real-world problems. More importantly, they are discovering that they have the ability to be change makers in both their local and global communities.

As Innovation Coordinators, Steph Duda and I are incredibly proud of the outcomes we’ve seen this year. Through these service-learning experiences, students are not only building academic skills but also finding deeper meaning and purpose in their learning.