Middle school stem
At Roland Park Country School, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) is purposefully integrated into our school curriculum through the entirety of middle school to expose our students to all of these concepts in a coordinated and meaningful way. The mission of our STEM program is to spark and sustain curiosity, passion, confidence, and persistence in every learner, establishing the essential foundation needed to explore the empirical world. We achieve this by providing frequent opportunities for hands-on discovery, which helps students to practice foundational problem-solving skills and develop early creative reasoning abilities.
In an active and collaborative environment, participants learn the fundamentals of inquiry - how to ask questions, observe, collaborate effectively, and share their findings - preparing them to eventually plan research projects, synthesize new knowledge, and generate novel solutions as they pursue interests in the STEM disciplines.
Middle School Curriculum
STEM 5
Innovation and Emerging Ideas: Students build the skills and confidence to bring their emerging ideas to life. They program and engineer robots to complete challenges that require logic, precision, and teamwork.
STEM 6
Exploring Technology Through Wayfinding: Students expand their understanding of computer science to navigate challenges. They develop innovative solutions to problems through brainstorming, prototyping, and testing.
STEM 7
Nurturing Community and Belonging: Students develop creative solutions to strengthen connections within their communities. They create interactive content to bring real-world issues to light.
STEM 8
Exploring Advocacy through Technology: Students grow as problem-solvers and advocates as they design their solutions around the user experience. Advocacy projects have ranged from 3D printed prosthetics to tiny houses that address homelessness.
4 Pillars of K-12 STEM at RPCS
Our curriculum is built upon four core pillars that guide skill development at each grade level. In grades K-8, every student attends a STEM class that builds their knowledge and prepares them for Upper School.
Computational Thinking
The problem-solving approach that helps students break down big problems, spot patterns, create step-by-step solutions, and think logically. These skills are used in programming and everyday life.
Engineering Design Process
The iterative process that requires students to ask questions, imagine solutions, plan, create, test, and improve their designs.
Designing with Empathy
Every work of creation makes an impact, intended or not. Students need to consider their audience, as well as the purpose and reach of their design.
Ethical Use of Technology
Students learn to use technology safely, respectfully, and responsibly through understanding digital footprints, artificial intelligence, privacy, attribution, and making smart choices online.
Middle School STEM Highlights
Every year builds upon one another in the Middle School STEM curriculum, allowing for a more in-depth understanding of the materials, and multiple instances of experiential learning.
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Tiny House Projects
8th graders research populations that are the most susceptible to homelessness and learn about what makes a "tiny house" and how to maximize living space in 400-650 square feet. Students design a house to meet a particular demographics needs, then create scaled drawings, a digital layout, and a scaled model of their design.
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First Lego League Qualifier for Middle School Robotics Team
The Middle School robotics team, Jr. Bionic Bears, competed in the First Lego League Qualifier at McDonogh in 2025. They were judged on their innovation project, robot design, performance of their robot during the robot games, and their ability to demonstrate the FLL core values of discovery, innovation, impact, inclusion, teamwork, and fun.
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Robot Floats
Fifth graders worked for multiple months to create the Lego spike prime robots. They learned how to program them to move, play music and display lights. The next phase incorporated more of the engineering design process where they were given specific constraints about size and weight and design rules and came up with float themes.