STEM School Fifth Graders Win
Gold Medal
A team of Jack Abrams STEM Magnet School students won a gold medal in the Long Island STEM Hub Engineering & Architecture Regional Industry Council’s second annual Reconstruction & Resilience Challenge.
This year’s finals played out at the Cradle of Aviation in Garden City. The Huntington STEM school fifth graders were ready for the challenge. Participants addressed the difficult task of rebuilding Long Island homes and entire communities devastated and even destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. Students were required to “focus on how we might make our homes or the homes of our more vulnerable neighbors better able to withstand future storms.”
The Jack Abrams STEM Magnet School students were guided by Matt Bilello, a science teacher at J. Taylor Finley Middle School. The fifth graders came from classes taught by Susan Curtain and Susan Danzing.
“All 48 students were split into six groups of eight kids and each group looked at one aspect of making a home in Huntington storm resistant,” Mr. Bilello explained. Students researched the building materials used in the construction of a home, flood prevention, finding stronger trees to survive a storm, reuses for rain water, alternative energy sources and making a home more aerodynamic.
Two students were selected from each of the six groups to go to the Cradle of Aviation for the final round of the challenge. “They made a Prezi presentation and showed it to the judges,” Mr. Bilello said. The presentation, which was about eight minutes in length, so impressed competition judges that they awarded it the coveted gold medal for the fifth graders’ respective age group.
Jack Abrams STEM Magnet School fifth graders who participated in the final round included Carolina Moreira-Ibarra, Lily O’Heir, Nate Coutler, Ava Brosnan, Lauren Gooding, Robert Harrington, Aaron Chin, Gemma Pellegrini, Ethan Franciscovich, Matthew Colavecchio and Catherine McCooey. (Alex Gonzalez was also a member of the final’s team, but illness prevented him from being at the Cradle of Aviation.)
“It was great to be at the Cradle of Aviation Museum representing our school,” Mr. Coulter said. “I enjoyed the private tour and breakfast provided. It was fun researching all the work and using Prezi software to help plan our presentation. We worked hard and we were very happy we won gold. All of our hard work paid off. It was a great experience.”
The youngsters’ paper and presentation were superb. “The paper has some really amazing images of a model house that a mentor helped us make,” Mr. Bilello said.
“It was so fun to learn new things, gather research with my friends and put on the presentation at the Museum,” Mr. Chin said.
Jack Abrams STEM Magnet School Principal Rae Montesano and the building’s faculty members were proud of the fifth graders for their gold medal winning work.