Learning Grows in the Garden and Classrooms at Tully Magnet Elementary School

Learning doesn't just happen in the classrooms at Tully Magnet Elementary School. Students are discovering important lessons about science, technology, engineering, art and math in the school's garden. 

Students have the opportunity to participate in electives, where they get to choose a class that interests them. In the gardening elective, students start off the session in the classroom, where they learn about science concepts that they can apply once they get outside into the garden. On one day, students in Mr. Andrew Stocker's class were learning about the sense of smell. They each had a different scent – such as vanilla, sage and spearmint – inside a cup and they had to identify the smell and find their "scent partner" who had the same scent in their cup.

Mr. Stocker said this activity helped students understand the importance of scents in the animal world. "We talked about animals like elephants who have a really good sense of smell, javelinas use their sense of smell to find family members," he explained.

Just down the hall in Ms. Jennifer McInnes' art class, students were hard at work building miniature furniture for the fairy garden, using twigs and leaves from the courtyard. They learned how to measure the pieces they needed to build the chairs and used their creativity to decorate them. 

The school has added more STEAM options, including the gardening and art classes, to their list of electives. Students are enjoying the hands-on activities that are embedded into the STEAM curriculum. They'll get a chance to show their families and Tully's community partners everything they've learned this semester during the "Electives and Empanadas" events, happening the week of December 18.