STEM by Design

Strategies and Activities for Grades 4-8

Anne Jolly

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317395782
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

How do you create effective STEM classrooms that energize students, help them grow into creative thinkers and collaborators, and prepare them for their futures? This practical book from expert Anne Jolly has all the answers and tools you need to get started or enhance your current program. Based on the author's popular MiddleWeb blog of the same name, STEM by Design reveals the secrets to successful lessons in which students use science, math, and technology to solve real-world engineering design problems. You'll learn how to:

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• Select and adapt quality existing STEM lessons that present authentic problems, allow for creative approaches, and engage students in meaningful teamwork;

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• Create your own student-centered STEM lessons based on the Engineering Design Process;

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• Assess students' understanding of basic STEM concepts, their problem-solving abilities, and their level of engagement with the material;

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• Teach STEM in after-school programs to further build on concepts covered in class;

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• Empower girls to aspire to careers in STEM and break down the barriers of gender bias;

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• Tap into STEM's project-based learning style to attract and engage all students.

Throughout this user-friendly book, you'll find design tools such as checklists, activities, and assessments to aid you in developing or adapting STEM lessons. These tools, as well as additional teacher resources, are also available as free downloads from the book's website, http://www.stem-by-design.com.

1

What Is STEM Education?

STEM education is an interdisciplinary approach to learning that removes the traditional barriers separating the four disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and integrates them into real-world, rigorous, and relevant learning experiences for students.

Vasquez, Comer and Sneider¹

Welcome, STEM Educators!

You may already have some experience in teaching STEM, or perhaps you just got the surprise memo: You are going to be teaching STEM classes this year. In either case, I’m picturing you as an avid learner, open to new ways of teaching, and looking forward to involving your students in a rich variety of learning experiences. You are flexible and have no desire to stagnate, no matter how much time you’ve spent in the classroom. You actively look for new and meaningful ways to guide student learning.

But this emerging educational trend—STEM—and its associated teaching strategies may be somewhat outside your comfort zone (and perhaps that of your students as well). Maybe you have already been “burned” by efforts to implement STEM or wondered about its value. Or, perhaps you believe STEM is worthwhile for students but haven’t figured out where to start. If that’s your situation, what can you do about it? How can you help yourself, your colleagues, and your students overcome any feelings of uncertainty about the What, Why and How of STEM education? Read on. You’ve come to the right place.

The Journey Begins

STEM by Design will take you on an adventure—a journey to help you locate the knowledge and tools you need to plan and begin your own STEM program in your classroom or school. On this journey you will discover, learn, connect, and build your understanding of STEM. By the end of our adventure, your teaching toolkit should be filled with new ideas and know-how to start you and your students on your own STEM explorations. Whatever your case, this book can help you. Diving into the STEM world will reveal new principles and practices that you can include in your tool chest of strategies to help students learn.

This chapter leads you along the first steps, as we consider just what we mean by “STEM” and how STEM looks in real classrooms. We’ll talk about some theory in this book but we will focus most of all on practice. I do need to beg your patience for a bit, though. The state of STEM curriculum across the USA (and perhaps elsewhere) is somewhat messy and we need to be clear about what we mean by “STEM” in this book, and what that means for our students and our teaching. That said, if you feel the urge to skip ahead, please do!

When you hear the word STEM, what comes to mind? Grab a pencil and paper. As you read the story of this group of 6th grade students engaged in a STEM classroom project, jot down some inferences you can make about some characteristics of a STEM class. You will refer to this later.

As a way of introducing STEM to your students, give copies of this story to your students and let them work in groups to identify some things they think might happen during STEM lessons. Two handouts are included at the end of Chapter 1 to help you with this activity: a copy of Design Tool 1.1: Ms. Rizzo’s STEM Class: A True Story and Design Tool 1.2: A STEM Class Analysis.

Ms. Rizzo’s STEM Class: A True Story

Ms. Rizzo is keeping a sharp eye on her students as each team works to gather data from its testing. Teams are constructing barrier systems to slow down the rate at which sediment is flowing from their model streambeds and some teams are having more luck than others. To test their barrier system, each team pours a liter of water down the model streambed. The team then measures the amount of sediment that gets past the barriers and enters the model watershed (a bucket at the end of the streambed). They clock the amount of time this takes. Team members use this data to calculate the sediment flow rate and decide whether to redesign the barrier system to hold back more sediment.

Several teams discover that their barrier system does not work well. Ms. Rizzo circulates through the room and reassures those teams that it’s okay that their barrier systems didn’t succeed. Failure is just a normal part of the engineering process; they can use what they learn to redesign. She refrains from giving them advice but does ask a few guiding questions to be sure they are on the right track.

Ms. Rizzo’s students really care about the real-life problem they are working on solving. New construction near their school is allowing large amounts of sediment to wash into a nearby stream. Students have already studied the value of watersheds in science and they can see how the sediment flowing into the watershed damages the environment. So they are working in teams to design barrier system prototypes that might hold back the sediment. By now a few teams are starting to realize that while they are decreasing the amount of sediment that gets into streams, they are creating a new problem. Now the sediment is building up in their streambed. Uh oh! How can they solve this new problem?

© Mobile Area Education Foundation. Reprinted with permission.

Ms. Rizzo nods to the math teacher, Mr. Curtis, who enters the room. He’s been teaching these students about flow rate and he’s come to check on their progress with the STEM project. One of the students catches his attention and remarks, “Mr. Curtis, do you remember when I asked you why we needed to learn how to calculate rates? Well, now I know. We have to use flow rates to solve this engineering problem. It’s like we’re combining math and science.”

What did you jot down about this class? (What do you think your students might jot down?) You might have noticed students working in teams, applying science and math content they had learned, and engaging in hands-on work. The teacher was facilitating their learning but not telling them what to do. Students were using their own ideas and designs to come up with solutions for a real problem. Students were also beginning to understand that science and math are used together to solve problems. The classroom atmosphere was risk-free, and failure was not regarded as bad, but as a way to generate more learning and make the final product better.

A few things about this class might not have been so evident. Students were integrating and applying math and science concepts that matched their course of study objectives. They had researched the problem and each team’s proposed solution involved using what they learned to brainstorm multiple ideas and choose one they thought might work best.

Each team was also collecting data from their testing. As data accumulated, the class analyzed data from multiple teams to draw conclusions about the best designs. The students followed an engineering design process and were consciously practicing and developing the habit of thinking like engineers.

Notice Ms. Rizzo’s approach to teaching. While she may have used a mixture of strategies, including some traditional approaches to teaching some of the science and math content, her students then delved into experiential, inquiry-based learning to apply what they had learned. No one was asking, “Why do I need to learn this?” When students genuinely interact with the content they learn, that question becomes obsolete.

What benefits did this kind of learning experience offer the students in Ms. Rizzo’s class? From what happened in Ms. Rizzo’s class, infer some answers for the question: What is STEM?

What is STEM?

Supporting STEM

Leaders in STEM schools must have a clear picture of what STEM is and what it is intended to accomplish in order to under-stand how to support this initiative. They must understand that STEM is intended to ratchet up rigor in science and math through engineering applications. It’s not intended as a general “catch-all” program for all subjects.

Probably the first thing you need to wrap your head around as a STEM teacher is this: “What will I be teaching?” When you hear the word STEM, what answer comes to mind?

Let’s start with the obvious. STEM is an acronym for traditional subjects already taught in schools. S stands for science, T is for technology, E is for engineering, M is for mathematics. But here’s the secret: STEM is a classic example of the sum being greater than the parts. Let’s investigate how we define these four components and their relationship inside the STEM learning model. (Keep in mind that STEM is a handy, easy-to-pronounce acronym but the order of the letters in STEM does not suggest a sequence—as you’ll soon see.)

• Science in STEM: Science is the study of the natural world, including physics, chemistry, and biology. In STEM, students connect...