3. Bring on the STEAM!!!

3. Bring on the STEAM!!!

This we believe (NMSA, 2010).

*Curriculum is challenging, exploratory, integrative, and relevant. Challenging Curriculum

Our district has encouraged a school-wide push for our students to participate in creating STEAM projects. Our principal charged us to support this district-wide initiative. On one team the language arts teachers worked with her students for four weeks to write research papers for their STEAM projects. In our schools, students could work in teams or individually to come up with a hypothesis, research it, conduct the experiment, post results, and write a summary. We worked on STEAM projects at the end of each day.

In addition to class time, we have thirty minutes built into each day for students to participate in enrichment/remediation, and those who have taken advantage of the time have been engaged. Our English Language Learner teacher worked every day with our ELL students. The library staff set up a table of construction paper and materials so students could create displays of their findings. The school-wide initiative is now a school-wide celebration!!!  Friday, students brought their final products in for presentation.

There was such pride. Five of the groups brought their projects into class. We set them up around the room. Several groups needed a few more pages printed. We were able to help them get that done as well. What I saw was student-generated ideas and student-generated work. Everyone I asked shared how much fun it was to do the project. My students were very proud of their work.

At the end of the day, one of my students was completing his project, burning holes in tinfoil with pencil lead. I sat down with him. He explained to me how he created his “plasma cutter.” He was able to explain to me what it was and how it worked. He shared the website where he found the experiment and said, “I am going to keep going to this website to get ideas for projects.”

Advice

1)   If you have not explored STEAM, I highly recommend you do so. Our STEAM page is http://mcdowell.k12.nc.us/apps/pages/index.jsp?type=d&uREC_ID=343819&pREC_ID=769668

2)   Getting all members of the faculty and staff on board can influence the value of the projects. If you school is going to engage in STEAM, take the leap to participate. Students want to be able to communicate their thinking with adults.

3)   Build time into the regular day for students to work on their projects. If language arts teachers can help students write research papers and math teachers can help students display their data, students will be receiving support from multiple resources.

4)   Our grading of the projects consists of students receiving four 100s for any four classes as part of their nine-weeks grades. The focus is on the process! It has been a great initiative!