Rio del Sol STEAM school

Get your classroom outside with the Yalp Memo!

The Yalp Memo at Rio del Sol STEAM K-8 school has been the most played of all the Memos on a schoolyard worldwide! Play statistics clearly show the weekends as an obvious flatline as the site is not open to the public. Rio focuses on developing the 5Cs of 21st-century learning; collaboration, communication, critical thinking, creativity, and caring while enhancing student literacy skills in reading, writing, mathematics, and technology.

Besides being the first school in the U.S. to adopt a Memo, the design itself is unique. The school and architect Gaylaird Christopher from Architects4Education wanted the area to celebrate the Native Americans’ heritage, who’s had a relationship to this particular site for thousands of years. The site lies next to one of the largest natural rivers in SoCal. The custom-designed turf includes the river and traditional Chumash canoes to reflect the ‘right of passage experience’ (when the Chumash peddle out to the Channel Islands). It also contains a compass point and the words: truth and energy. These words are two core values in a diagram that reflect essential beliefs of the Chumash in a three dimensional way.