Elementary students throughout Aurora Public Schools are enjoying a unique STEM-oriented lesson this semester that actually encourages them to make noise.
Students at nine different schools are building their own harmonicas and then playing them to learn about sound waves. The participating schools are Altura Elementary, Arkansas Elementary, Aurora Highlands P-8, Clara Brown Entrepreneurial Academy, Dalton Elementary, Iowa Elementary, Jewell Elementary, Murphy Creek P-8 and Vaughn Elementary.
This fun learning experience comes from a partnership between Colorado Women in AV and IT (COWAVIT) and Rosie Riveters, an organization dedicated to inspiring young girls to pursue careers in STEM.
COWAVIT is providing 850 free Rosie Riveters harmonica kits to the schools. 4th-grade students at the participating schools are primarily assembling the harmonicas which are made from tongue depressors, straws and rubber bands. COWAVIT is also providing the instruction on how to assemble the kits and how sound waves work.
At a recent visit to Altura Elementary, Christie Mitchell, Co-President of COWAVIT, loved seeing students figure out how to build and then play the harmonicas. "I think that a tactile lesson where you can touch it, feel it, see it, hear it and use all of your senses is an incredible way to drop into the math and science and STEM portion of education," she said.
When the students at all nine schools play their harmonicas, instructors are using a decibel-measuring app developed by Colorado’s Mersive Technologies to see which class has the greatest harmonica-playing power. The class that plays the loudest out of all the schools will receive 30 free sets of Shure headphones!