Elementary Students Get Experience with Engineering, Entrepreneurship
Shows like Shark Tank might be aimed at adults, but one Hodgenville Elementary School classroom is getting a hands-on opportunity to become entrepreneurs.
Students in Laura Evans’s classroom will work on a project where they’re given random objects and they have to decide a product to make with the items. Not only that, the product has to be something that other students would be interested in purchasing.
Evans’s students will have to tap into their creativity and budding salesmanship. Many educators agree that learning entrepreneurship gives students the opportunity to cultivate creativity, resilience, and the skills needed to innovate and navigate the ever-changing landscape of the business world.
The project serves as part of a much larger, district-wide push to use project-based learning to help students. These projects are part of the district’s Profile of a Learner initiative. The goal is to give students of all ages skills that they can take with them outside of the classroom. It also helps them apply what they learned in the classroom in creative ways.
Similar to Evans’s students, a group of students from HES and ALES recently presented at The Hodgenville Rotary Club about their Project-Based Learning. These projects centered around the real-world application of classroom objectives in entrepreneurship and architecture. All in, giving further evidence to the growing tide of students being prepared for life after graduating from LaRue County High School with a focus on the five competencies listed in the Learner Profile inspired by community input.
For Evans’s students, the specific targets met by the project are Collaborative Communicator, Resilient Problem Solver, and Life-long Learner.
“This will prepare students for life after graduation because students will have to work through the struggle of using limited items to make a product,” Evans said. “They have to collaborate with their team to decide what product to design. They will have an understanding of wants and needs and the impact it has on the economy.”
To learn more about the LaRue County Learner Profile, scan the QR code accompanying this article to see the newly launched Learner Profile page on the LaRue County Schools website. There you can explore details about each of the five competencies, explained by LC staff Traci Weaver, Nikki Waldeck, Missy Flanders, Jim Phelps, and Abby Lee. You can also view how these competencies are integrated into the classroom from the youngest Hawks through students' final year at LCHS.