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On October 29, 2025, STEAM in Action had its second of five sessions with students at Rice Intermediate School in San Carlos, AZ. The STEAM Team spent 45 minutes facilitating inquiry-based learning and hands-on activities with each 4th-grade class (5 total).
The session was developed to align with Arizona’s 4th-Grade Science Standard - 4.L4.U1.1: Analyze and interpret environmental data to demonstrate that species either adapt and survive or go extinct over time. This session was postponed due to flooding that occurred earlier this month in the Globe, Miami, and San Carlos areas. Pre-session videos and information on the geological history of the Sonoran Desert were shared with teachers to provide additional resources while the community recovered from the floods.
During the in-person sessions with 4th-graders, we explored how fossils are created - emphasizing the need for water and the process of permineralization, particularly highlighting groundwater and seawater. In small groups, students make salt dough (noting ratios and proportions). They selected natural elements brought from Tucson - sticks, dried leaves, grasses, flowers, rocks - to create their very own mold fossil model!