Tulsa Public Schools STEAM Center Program

STEAM Center

An unprecedented partnership between a museum and an entire school district is realized within the Education Center at Discovery Lab.

As the bond-funded STEAM Center for Tulsa Public Schools, Discovery Lab is developing and delivering hands-on, focused STEAM programming connected to Oklahoma Academic Standards within the five classrooms at the new Museum on Riverside. The STEAM Center will impact 25,000 Tulsa Public Schools students in pre-k through fifth grade each year with cornerstone, “memory-making” educational experiences and still not fill 50% of the Education Center capacity to serve the region's school districts. 

 

Students will progress through each classroom with their educator on a “STEAM Road Trip.” Each room will be a different, 15-minute guided experience to encourage observation and pattern recognition.
Students will experience forces that cause movement and identify the origin of the forces that cause movement.
Students will explore vibrations in all objects, learn how to sense them, and discover the connections between pitch and length. Tools will include singing pipes, strings, straws and more.
Students will conduct investigations with clouds, rain, and making weather in the classroom.
Students will create ways to attract and repel electricity through the classroom and (safely) around each other.
Students will observe and experience the transfer of energy from one form to another: from motion to electricity and electricity to light or sound. This will culminate with a whole-class, whole-body challenge to become an energy transfer device.
Students will observe a variety of substances transform into different states of matter and learn about the atomic implications, ending in a climactic liquid nitrogen demonstration.