The Macy’s parade and its iconic balloons are two of the most celebrated Thanksgiving traditions.  Teachers at Maplewood Intermediate School have found a way to turn that festive event into a lesson in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, math) and start a school tradition that began in 2023. The school held its third annual Balloons Over Maplewood pre-Thanksgiving parade on Monday, November 24th.  It puts fifth grade students’ computer coding knowledge and creativity to the test by having them design a robotic parade balloon that becomes part of Maplewood’s very own Thanksgiving parade through the school hallways.

All students in the South Huntington School District start learning computer coding in fifth grade. Education Technology teacher Janine D’Elia, teamed up with Maplewood’s art teacher, Mrs. Ashlyn Gilhooly, and school librarian Ms. Kim DeRosa to create this multi-discipline project that also teaches teamwork and collaboration.  “Our theme for learning this year is based on the book “Collaboration Station.” So that's one of the things that we wanted our students and staff to do is to be able to collaborate together.  And [students] are able to see our staff members working together for their benefit. So then when it's brought into the classroom and the students are asked to work together, it kind of puts the lesson all together for them,” said Maplewood principal Maria Colon. 

Fifth grade classes began working on their creations in the beginning of October.  First, they had to read the book “Balloons Over Broadway” that tells the story of the first balloons created for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  Next, in teams of four students, they designed and created a balloon float, and then wrote the code that tells the float what route to follow.  “The STEAM aspect of it is the technology piece and the engineering piece, because they're engineering the balloon. And then, the art piece, which is the arts and crafts.  Math is involved because in the coding aspect of their algorithms, they had to learn how to turn something 90 degrees. If it wasn't a full 90 degrees, what's half a 90? So they were learning angles. They were also learning centimeters as they were counting the tile squares in the hallways when they were testing out the parade route,” said D’Elia. 

Each balloon float is carried along by the popular learning tool, Dash the Robot, that helps teach coding and robotics to children in grades K-8.  Maplewood’s fifth graders walk the parade route with their balloon floats while the third and fourth graders line the hallways to watch, laugh, and cheer them on.  The laughs come when the balloon floats don’t always head in the right direction!

While these fifth graders are a long way from becoming part of the workforce, D’Elia says projects like this give them a head start on the job skills they’ll need.  “The majority of the students really got the whole team player, work together, problem solving, collaborative aspect of this project, all skills that we need in the workforce,’ said D’Elia.

See photos here!