Webutuck annual STEAM fair planned March 8 for all grades

AMENIA — The Webutuck Teachers’ Association will be hosting its 11th annual STEAM Fair on Saturday, March 8, from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. in the Eugene Brooks Intermediate School’s gym.

STEAM, an acronym for science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics, provides students from kindergarten through twelfth grade with the opportunity to display a project in these content areas.

“These are generally done independently outside of class so some teachers do give students opportunities in class as well to brainstorm and plan,” Danielle Fridstrom, Teachers’ Association co-chair and science teacher at Webutuck, said. “Teachers are generally available during extra-help sessions if students need additional assistance in the planning.”

All grades are given an opportunity to discuss their topic with either student volunteers or staff judges. The student’s age will determine who will be designated to their section. Projects can be viewed by the attending community.

“We try to get high school student volunteers to act as listeners for our younger participants. So, they get that practice having those discussions about science,” Fridstrom said. “It gives a good opportunity for both of them to share what they’re interested in personally, as well as get that experience by having those conversations.”

Students participating in the STEAM Fair in fifth grade and above have the opportunity to be judged by staff volunteers. According to Fridstrom, each participating student will generally see three different volunteers who will each submit scoring for a collective tally.

“Our students in grades five through 12... can elect to be judged, and any individual projects that win would be eligible to compete at the Dutchess County Fair,” Fridstrom said. “For our younger students, those projects aren’t judged, but the last few years what we have done is we typically have listeners, which they don’t get scores, but folks will go around and discuss their projects with them and ask them questions about what they were interested in.”

The Webutuck student winners will then be able to display their projects at the Dutchess County Regional Science Fair on Saturday, April 5, at Dutchess Community College in Poughkeepsie. This fair does not accept group projects, and entrants must be registered by Wednesday, March 19.

“It is a big project for us that we’ve been talking about, getting out the posters, recruiting students, figuring out all that, myself and Christine Gillette, our co-chair,” Fridstrom said. “I would say it takes a lot of effort by all of our volunteers. This is teachers donating their time to come in on a Saturday and help with the setup and the judging and all of that. So it couldn’t really be done without that support of all of our teachers.”

The snow date for this event is Saturday, March 15. Interested students can sign up on Monday, Feb. 24.