Seventeen Resolutions for Teaching STEM in 2017

Earlier in the month I emailed some of the great teacher participants in the Golden Apple STEM Institute partnership schools, asking them to reflect on 2016 and share one New Year’s Resolution they have for STEM in 2017. What follows are a selection of those resolutions. Maybe they will spark some ideas about what you might want to do in your own STEM classroom in 2017.

Several teachers responded with very specific goals, often focusing on particular content areas they want to work on or, given that NGSS is still relatively new, on NGSS implementation itself.

“My new year’s resolution is that I want to continue to create new science units that align with the NGSS standards.” Keniesha Charleston, 2nd grade, Murray Elementary

Keniesha Charleston (left) with Murray Elementary Colleague Arleta Ingram.

“I would like to do at least one Science and Math integrated lesson with my teaching partner a quarter that combines the skills we are teaching in Math and Science.“ Jill Ryan, 6th grade, Durkin Park Elementary

“One of my aspirations this year is to collaborate with the kindergarten teachers to enhance their unit on the study of butterflies. We will develop a unit where students will research the life cycle of a butterfly and apply that new knowledge to create a habitat that would best sustain the life of the butterfly through each stage of its life cycle.” Amanda Conway, STEM Coordinator, Pershing Elementary

“My resolution for next year is to try to come up with at least one new activity or performance assessment that will incorporate NGSS and STEM in my classroom and to keep the students engaged with inquiry and problem solving.” Mike Albro, 7th – 8th Science, Byrne Elementary

For some teachers, 2017 will offer opportunities for integrating the STEM subjects with the arts, thereby moving toward STEAM-based experiences for their students.

” For my New Year resolution, I would like to include more art projects into my curriculum, turning my STEM classroom into a STEAM classroom. As Einstein said, ’Imagination is more important than knowledge.’ I believe I can develop my students’ imaginations in a greater and more deliberate way by adding art to the projects they do in my class.” Joe Estela, Upper Grades Science, Nightingale Elementary

“My resolution for 2017 is all about my dream for an event/unit with my middle school students in February. It is called STEAMPunk (Science, Theatre, Entertainment, Arts, Music, Powerful, United, Next Generation, Kids). I developed a unit that will connect an experiment design project with a music, visual arts, or theatre piece that is created by the student to show off the new knowledge learned from the science experiment as well as new knowledge about that discipline of art. Please come if you are available on February 1, 2017, during the day of course. I am inviting everyone out to listen, watch, learn and enjoy art our middle schoolers create. This is an overwhelming feat that has taken collaboration and patience between students, art teachers, and myself. Give everything you can to a dream. Communicate it, plan it, reflect on it, and do the work in order to make sure it comes true.” Kelly Harris Preston, 8th grade Science, Brentano Elementary

Since the advent of the Next Generation Science Standards, Engineering is a new element in the science classroom, so it’s not surprising that a number of these great teachers will be focusing on incorporating more engineering activities into their instructional plans.

“For the New Year, I will focus more on engaging my students in the Engineering Design component of NGSS.” Anh Hoang, 2nd grade, Murray Language Academy

Ahn Hoang of Murray Language Academy at the Intro to Inquiry Summer Program

“My STEM Resolution for 2017 is to align an engaging engineering lab for each of the Holidays that occur during the school calendar year. Combining festive themes with critical problem solving skills is a WIN-WIN! My classroom engineers ‘win’ because they think they are ‘getting out of class’ with our holiday themed project/activity. And I WIN, because I know they are being exposed to multiple engineering practices. Cara West, 6th grade, Durkin Park Elementary

Several teachers couldn’t limit themselves to just one STEM Resolution. In their lists, they reveal thoughtful, concrete plans, a blueprint for transforming their STEM classrooms in the coming year.

“I want to
• Continue to convince students they can be good in science and math by implementing interesting, rigorous, hands on STEM activities. (STEMscopes is aligned with NGSS).
• Take students to more real world workplaces to experience how STEM is integrated.
• Have students sign up for this weekly newsletter I just found called STEM Jobs.” (VERY COOL, BTW!)
Ain Muhammad, STEM Coordinator, Wentworth STEM Academy

“My New Year’s Resolutions are to

• Contact all Chicago Museums and have them support me as I create Inquiry-Based projects in my classrooms. (I did have a difficult time thinking about an inquiry-based project as I worked on the Food Chain and Food Webs. Having the support of the Museum of Science and Industry, Lincoln Park Zoo, and Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum will help me create an exciting curriculum for my students.)
• Increase parental involvement in and outside the classroom to promote the STEM curriculum. (I need parents to come into the classroom to provide adult supervision as students are actively engaged in their investigations. I also need them to continue fostering the children’s natural curiosity at home in the field of science and technology.)
• Start collecting my science materials for my future projects.
• Make ALL my students enjoy SCIENCE through the use of inquiry-based lessons. (I wish I had been taught Science using STEM and inquiry. It would have made a WORLD OF DIFFERENCE!!!!)” Maria Soto, 2nd grade, Washington Elementary

Teaching STEM is not always the easiest job in the world, particularly given the neglect of science education over the past decades and the compartmentalization of subjects begging to be integrated. But some teachers say with absolute determination, “Bring it on!”

“I will dedicate this new year to finding exciting and relevant ways to teach and engage my students, while always keeping an open mind to refining or restructuring what has already been taught.” Jake Pagan, 6th grade, Morrill Elementary

Jake Pagan, Morrill Elementary Sixth Grade Teacher

“For the new year, I would like to try to get my grade level team more excited about science by planning hands-on team assignments — maybe, even a grade level competition.” Stacy Gibson, 1st grade, Tonti Elementary

“This New Year I want to embrace the fact that students want to learn about things I am not supposed to teach in 3rd grade. As we immerse students into inquiry, some questions veer from my original objectives but are such high quality questions I want to find ways to support their investigations that may be ‘off topic.’ I know this requires increased flexibility but starting in January, I am up for the challenge!” Brittany Williams, 3rd grade, Brentano

Brittany Williams, Brentano Elementary Third Grade Teacher

In other words,

“Think STEM and Persevere!” Chanel Simpson, Drake Elementary

The final four resolutions are more global and reflect the powerful human connection between our lives and our teaching and the grit and optimism that it takes to thrive in today’s classrooms. They move outside an individual classroom, pointing to the wider world beyond and to the future.

“My STEM resolution for 2017 is to have it be the vehicle to make more students believe and know they can change the world with just their mind.” Letitia Dennis, 8th grade, Gillespie Technology Magnet School

“As I reflect on this year, I think I look forward to the growth in rich, engaging, and deep discussions my students will have in connection to STEM. I hope in this school year and in the years to come, I will be able to support and inspire my students to think, question, wonder, and hold meaningful discussions about science in ways that others may not have thought before.” Winnie Ho, STEM Coordinator, Everett Elementary

“My resolution is to emphasize how important it is to teach with a STEM focus. It not only serves as a means for approaching math and science content, but also presents the opportunity to introduce critical global challenges into the consciousness of future generations that will feel the impact at a much greater level than we do.” William Campillo, STEM Coordinator, Hernandez Math and Science Academy

“My New Year’s resolution for 2017 is to focus on what I love most, myself, my family, my friends, and of course, science! As an administrator, I am going to go back to my roots as a science teacher, coach, and coordinator to make an impact in our school. 2017 will be a GREAT YEAR!!!” Michelle Smith, Assistant Principal, Clissold Elementary

With all of this intelligence, creativity, and energy directed at improving STEM instruction just in this small sampling of classrooms, 2017 will indeed be a GREAT YEAR!!! … most especially for the students of these awesome teachers. I want to thank each of them for sharing their STEM resolutions.

And if you happen to be based in a Chicago Metro area school, why not consider exploring a partnership with Golden Apple STEM Institute as one of your resolutions for 2017?

Happy New Year!!

~ Penny

You can learn more about Golden Apple STEM Institute here.

This Works!

The Finns woke up one day in 2007 to discover, much to their collective surprise, that they led the rest of the world in education. When they embarked on education reform some 40 years earlier, they hadn’t set out to beat anyone in that arena but only to improve the educational opportunities for Finnish children. However, by emphasizing equitable access to a high quality education for all children regardless of either their socio economic circumstances or their inherent capacity and by fostering collaboration in schools and in teacher preparation, they wound up outscoring everyone else on the PISA and other measures of student achievement — all of this without going the route of incessant standardized tests and an obsessive focus on student achievement in a narrow range of subjects. By the way, teaching is a highly sought after profession in Finland thanks to the vision the Finns had for their schools.

As a result of that vision and their singleminded pursuit of it, education has become Finland’s oil, a new natural resource that they are exporting to other countries. And we can learn a lot from the Finns.

In this blog over the past years I’ve reflected several times on how we Americans do Science Fairs. If you’ve read any of those entries, you know that I’m not entirely thrilled by the way ours are constituted, although I do see potential in having children conduct scientific investigations and meet engineering challenges, presenting their results to their peers and to knowledgeable adults who can both positively reinforce their efforts and stimulate further thinking by the child scientists and engineers.

So when I was in Finland week before last, I was delighted to encounter a student science fair of sorts, Tämä toimii!, at Tampere University of Applied Sciences in Hervanta, Finland. Tampere is Finland’s second largest university in engineering sciences, and its statutory duty is to pursue research and give the best possible education in its field. Tuition is free to students from Finland and other EU countries. Let me repeat that. Finnish students receive a world class education in engineering without incurring any student debt. That day, Tampere University was playing host to children from local schools who were sharing their work with judges.

Translated: Hey, brought the toy moves (moving toy?)! This Works!

As with other aspects of Finnish education, there are some things we can learn from Tämä toimii!, which means “This Works!”

Tämä toimii! is an annual competition (since 2013) for children grades 4-6, so around 10 years of age, to design a toy with moving parts. In the fall, schools register their desire to participate and by November receive confirmation and the schedule of spring events. In early December, participating schools receive a list of approved materials, so that they can begin gathering them from around the school and from children’s homes. Finland places a strong emphasis on recycling and has for years, so most of the materials the children will be using for their toy inventions are materials that they are repurposing or recycling. The children keep a diary of their work, and their final product is a toy that will be judged for its success in movement over repeated tries, its delight as a plaything for children, and its inventive use of recycled materials. They must also produce an ad for their toy and demonstrate the toy to various groups —from other children to adult judges.

Presented to spark your creativity, here is a list of suggested materials from the 2016 competition:

Permitted building:
A disc (e.g. wood, metal, plastic), max. 50cm x 50cm x 1cm
Cocktail, dental or barbecue sticks
Juice whistles
CD discs
A tube (e.g. Pringles)
Plastic pipe, max. ⌀ 2cm
Beverage cans / plastic water bottle
Bottle
Plastic box / jar (e.g. Margarine tubs) and a plastic cover
Clay (also hardening modeling clay)
Craft Beads (all types)
Egg carton (max. 12 egg cell)
Fabric (e.g. A blanket, cotton, oilcloth etc.)
Foil
Carto, max. 50cm x50cm x50 cm; paperboard, max. 100cm x100cm; copy paper
Newspaper
Rope or fishing line
Wire
Screws (all types / all sizes)
Nails (all types / all sizes)
Rubber loops or equivalent (e.g. Hair elastics)
Balloons
Clothes pegs
Ballpoint pens
Empty pump soap bottle or equivalent
Ball (glass / metal / plastic)
Plastic test tube
Magnet (diagonal / diameter max. 3cm)
Light bulbs or LEDs
Switches
Connection conductor / winding wire
Buzzer
A recycled solar cell

However, some of the materials may also be purchased.

Children begin their work in January and by March they are presenting in regional events, leading up to the finals.

Spend a few minutes watching some of this video from 2014, and you’ll get the idea … and as you do, think about the science fairs you’ve attended.

To help you visualize further, here are some photos I took of the groups of students with their toy creations who were presenting that day at Tampere University.

Students being interviewed by media, by judges, and (in English) by my colleague Rozy Patel.

 

The genius of children with recyclables. Note the houseboat in the top half — it moves in the tub of water and inside it the table is set.

I know I haven’t captured all of the details of this program, my Finnish being nonexistent and Google translator having its limits, but several things struck me that day that were distinctly different from what I’ve observed judging science fairs in the U.S., six to be precise, and I think they could give us some things to think about in considering how to improve our science fairs.

1. Rather than one or two student limits on a project, This Works! requires that 4 children collaborate. If a class doesn’t divide evenly into groups of 4, a group of 3 or 5 is allowed.
2. Each group must include both boys and girls; they are equal partners in the work.
3. By definition, each project is a STEAM project because the design of the toys, the color choices, the decorative elements, and the required ad for the toy all demand attention to design and artistic expression.
4. There are none of those ubiquitous and boring boards … sorry Staples … and no evidence of a formula the children must follow in presenting their toy to the judges.
5. Most of the materials are repurposed or recycled, encouraging children to be imaginative about things that would otherwise likely be discarded. This also levels the playing field because parental income doesn’t matter at all in the outcome of the finished product. It also fosters and participates in the strong eco-minded culture of Finland, something we could certainly improve on.
6. Creating toys clearly matters to children. A program like this respects children’s innate desire to play and the fact that they learn through play. This is a powerful real world connection that most American science fair entries I’ve seen simply don’t have.

And the icing on the cake for me was that the children were able to respond to my questions in English and present their toy in English as well as in their native Finnish. I know you can’t tell this from the video and pictures, but I saw it with my own eyes. How many American students could do the same? These children are ready for the 21st century and for contributing the products of their imaginations to their own society and to the global economy. Even the name of this program builds confidence in children … “this works!” There’s a sense of exaltation in that phrase!

Until next time, Hyvää kevättä! (Happy Spring!)

~ Penny

You can learn more about STEM Institute here.

Crosscutting Concepts

Here is a list:

Patterns: Observed patterns of forms and events guide organization and classification, and they prompt questions about relationships and the factors that influence them.
Cause and effect: Mechanism and explanation. Events have causes, sometimes simple, sometimes multifaceted. A major activity of science is investigating and explaining causal relationships and the mechanisms by which they are mediated. Such mechanisms can then be tested across given contexts and used to predict and explain events in new contexts.
Scale, proportion, and quantity: In considering phenomena, it is critical to recognize what is relevant at different measures of size, time, and energy and to recognize how changes in scale, proportion, or quantity affect a system’s structure or performance.
Systems and system models: Defining the system under study—specifying its boundaries and making explicit a model of that system—provides tools for understanding and testing ideas that are applicable throughout science and engineering.
Energy and matter: Flows, cycles, and conservation. Tracking fluxes of energy and matter into, out of, and within systems helps one understand the systems’ possibilities and limitations.
Structure and function: The way in which an object or living thing is shaped and its substructure determine many of its properties and functions.
Stability and change: For natural and built systems alike, conditions of stability and determinants of rates of change or evolution of a system are critical elements of study.

Structure and Function

By now, you are likely familiar with this domain of the Next Generation Science Standards, the seven Crosscutting Concepts, ideas that bridge all the science content areas, from amoebae to supernovae.

Here is another list:

The Family Is All There Is
by Pattiann Rogers

“Think of those old, enduring connections 
found in all flesh–the channeling 
wires and threads, vacuoles, granules, plasma and pods, purple veins, ascending 
boles and coral sapwood (sugar-
and light-filled), those common ligaments, filaments, fibers and canals.

Seminal to all kin also is the open 
mouth–in heart urchin and octopus belly, in catfish, moonfish, forest lily, and rugosa rose, in thirsty magpie, wailing cat cub, barker, yodeler, yawning coati.

And there is a pervasive clasping 
common to the clan–the hard nails
 of lichen and ivy sucker 
on the church wall, the bean tendril 
and the taproot, the bolted coupling 
of crane flies, the hold of the shearwater
 on its morning squid, guanine 
to cytosine, adenine to thymine,
 fingers around fingers, the grip
 of the voice on presence, the grasp 
of the self on place.

Remember the same hair on pygmy
 dormouse and yellow-necked caterpillar, 
covering red baboon, thistle seed 
and willow herb? Remember the similar
snorts of warthog, walrus, male moose
 and sumo wrestler? Remember the familiar 
whinny and shimmer found in river birches, bay mares and bullfrog tadpoles, in children playing at shoulder tag on a summer lawn?

The family–weavers, reachers, winders 
and connivers, pumpers, runners, air and bubble riders, rock-sitters, wave-gliders, wire-wobblers, soothers, flagellators—all
 brothers, sisters, all there is.

Name something else.”

“the hard nails of lichen” and moss

If you are not familiar with the poetry of Pattiann Rogers, you’re in for a treat. Here is a poet who has beautifully captured the notion of Crosscutting Concepts; they run throughout “The Family Is All There Is.” The patterns of “open mouth” and “clasping.” The structure and function of “the channeling wires and threads.” The system of kinship among all living things … “the family is all there is.”

Arguably the theme of this poem is “all things are connected.” And isn’t that, in essence, the great understanding that the NGSS Crosscutting Concepts lead us to? Don’t they guide and promote our ability to see those connections, those commonalities? And doesn’t Pattiann Rogers do the same in that poem, in the grand tradition of the Metaphysical Poets.

So, in case you haven’t crossed her path before, let me briefly introduce her to you and then to what I think is one of the major implications of her work for educators and specifically for those of us in STEM education.

A brief biography: Pattiann Rogers was born in 1940 in Joplin, Missouri. Her mother was a schoolteacher. Pattiann went to the University of Missouri where she met her future husband, John Robert Rogers, in French class. She completed her degree in English literature, and the couple married in 1960. While John completed his PhD in Physics, Pattiann worked as a kindergarten teacher. She and her husband had two sons, John and Arthur, and by the birth of their second son were living in Houston, where her husband did geophysical research for Texaco while pursuing postgraduate training in geology at the University of Houston. Meanwhile, Rogers devoted herself, during their early years, to raising the couple’s two sons, eventually enrolling in a graduate program in creative writing at the University of Houston and earning her MA in 1981, the same year she published her first book of poems, The Expectations of Light, which received an award from the Texas Institute of Letters and prompted critic Peter Stitt to comment on her “sophisticated incorporation of modern scientific thinking into poetry.”

Rogers’s eldest son John earned a PhD in physics at MIT and is now celebrated as one of the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana’s “star professors” and one of the leading material scientists in the world. In fall 2016, he will be leaving the U of I to become the Louis Simpson and Kimberly Querrey Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and Medicine in the Simpson Querrey Institute for BioNanotechnology, Northwestern’s newly endowed center for biointegrated electronics. He and his research team have developed a wireless antibiotic implant that dissolves after a patient’s treatment is complete. In 2013 the group developed a tattoo-like sensor that can measure brain waves, heartbeats, and the contraction of skeletal muscles.
That was a mouthful.

But I wanted to include it to suggest the way in which the arts and sciences can marry, can feed each other (read inspire), and basically operate as one family within the human intellect. Far from being the two separate cultures C. P. Snow described in 1959, they are, ideally and quite appropriately, helpmeets. Snow believed that Britain, his country, had privileged the humanities over the scientific and engineering education he felt necessary to manage the modern scientific world. We certainly don’t do that in today’s United States. In fact, we don’t seem to privilege either the Arts or the Sciences, if the time spent on those disciplines in our schools and if what is tested, i.e., valued, are any indication. But perhaps, united, both science and art stand a better chance.

Let’s take an excerpt from another of Pattiann Rogers’s poems, “How the Body in Motion Affects the Mind.”

“We are bound by the theorem of sockets and joints,
Totally united with contraction and release.
The idea of truth cannot be separated
From the action of the hand releasing
The stone at the precise apogee of the arm’s motion
Or from the spine’s flexibility easing
Through a wooden fence. The notion
Of the vast will not ignore the arm swinging
In motion from the shoulder or the fingers
Clasped together in alternation.

And when the infant, for the first time,
Turns his body over completely, think
What an enormous revelation in the brain
Must be forced, at that moment, to right itself.”

I can’t help but notice in this poem what we’ve come to call scientific thinking, the Wheel of Inquiry. When you reflect on the NGSS, specifically the eight Scientific and Engineering Practices, the observation, the awakened curiosity, the questioning, the developing of models, all come into play in the work of this poet and arguably that of artists everywhere. Artists too are observers, problem solvers, investigators of discrepant events, and communicators of what they learn from their explorations of the world.

It’s easy to see why Rogers “is known for verse that both embraces the natural world and unfolds the complexities of science.” Roald Hoffmann, Nobel laureate in chemistry said, “I’ve never seen nature observed as closely, nor transfigured by human language, as in Pattiann Rogers’ poetry.” If you want to further explore the work of Pattiann Rogers, a good place to start is to dive into Song of the World Becoming: New and Collected Poems 1891-2001(2001). Her poems are an education in ecology, astronomy, biology, and in the vocabulary of science and scientific observation. I also highly recommend her reflections on her writing in The Dream of the Marsh Hen: Writing as Reciprocal Creation (1999). Both books are seedbeds from which teachers can generate arts based and science connected activities for their students, by activating students’ curiosity and imagination. And to delve into the works of other poets who have taken science and math as their own fertile field, have a look at Verse and Universe: Poems about Science and Mathematics (1998). Pattiann Rogers is included in this anthology, and so is chemist Roald Hoffmann.

Image: J Brew via Flickr (Creative Commons)

So just maybe the ultimate Crosscutting Concept is that science and art are fundamentally related, the thought processes of scientists and artists more akin than surface appearances would suggest. Part of our task then as teachers and as a society is to erase the artificial divide between the two and the notion that we have two competing cultures, as if there could possibly be a competition at that most fundamental of levels — the working of the human mind. And that would logically lead us to very thoughtfully tuck a capital A into STEM right after the E.

As Pattiann Rogers states in The Dream of the Marsh Wren. “It has seemed to me impossible to live in our world, to survive — the split, the rending being too great — if a union could not be found and created within these two ways of knowing, the artistic and the scientific, both so essential and so present in our lives. I believe that the union is there and only lacks expression to bring it into reality.”

~ Penny

To learn more about STEM Institute, click here.

From STEM to STEAM: Using Brain-Compatible Strategies to Integrate the Arts ~ A Review

Following on the last entry, today’s post will continue what will be a yearlong focus on evolution. No, not that evolution!

STEM Institute spends one day during Introduction to Inquiry on evolution as it refers to teaching. Our program has evolved, just as we have evolved as teachers in our thinking about and practice of teaching and as we encourage all teachers to evolve over the course of their teaching careers. But we are increasingly wondering if  our evolution as a provider of teacher professional development should include evolving from STEM to STEAM, infusing more arts into our program, or at least exploring that option.

What we don’t want to do is thoughtlessly tack on some art activities to reinforce science content … a poem here, a drawing there. Rather we want to investigate what deeply infusing the arts into the STEM program would do for kids. And what it would look like? What are the practical implications? What are the arguments for and against, and what are the implications for 21st century learning?

But let’s begin with why we might even consider such an evolution in a program that is already high quality and highly regarded by teachers. Why mess with success?

To help answer this question, let’s take a look at a book focused precisely on our theme. From STEM to STEAM: Using Brain-Compatible Strategies to Integrate the Arts by David A. Sousa and Tom Pilecki (Corwin, 2013) provides a combination of the grounding philosophy, historical perspective, and science to support such an evolution and the practical tools, strategies, and activities for teachers and principals to employ in carrying it out.

STEM to STEAM: Using Brain-Compatible Strategies to Integrate the Arts

The first two chapters of From STEM to STEAM present the philosophical and scientific background for Sousa and Pilecki’s view that STEM ought to become STEAM. They see arts and science as complementary rather than competitive and situate that idea in history. The ancient Olympic games in Greece, for example, included competitions in the arts as well as in sports, with the arts being every bit as prestigious. And Renaissance artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti “saw no boundaries between the arts and sciences.”

Citing research study after research study, the authors provide ample ammunition for educators looking to make a case for STEAM. The arts foster cognitive development in children, helping young minds develop creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, communications, self-direction, initiative, and collaboration. The arts evoke emotions, which enhances learning and fosters retention. And Sousa and Pilecki suggest novel reasons for integrating arts within a STEM curriculum, including the idea that “the arts introduce many more possibilities for novelty,” which, according to neuroscientists, is necessary to grabbing student attention, a necessary precursor to learning. Students like doing “something different,” and hearing their teacher announce “we’re going to be doing something different today” makes them sit up and take notice. The arts also lower stress levels making young minds more receptive to retaining new knowledge. Reducing stress is particularly important in these times of high stakes testing. The arts also make teaching more interesting and fun for teachers. Teachers benefit from novelty too. A bored teacher isn’t likely to excite a child to learn.

Sousa and Pilecki very much support the approach taken by STEM Institute in encouraging teachers to strive for many answers and to encourage divergent thinking. They observe that “the actual time that teachers devote to divergent thinking in STEM classes is often limited because the STEM areas – as currently taught in our schools – lend themselves so well to convergent thinking, and because testing STEM concepts is easier with close-ended questions that have only one correct answer. Yet this type of instruction may be extinguishing creativity in our students. Some researchers believe that by consistently reinforcing neural pathways with convergent thinking activities, we may be limiting the pathways that support creative and divergent thinking.” That gives one pause because, “the study of the arts not only allows students to develop skills that will improve the quality of their lives but also sustains the same creative base from which scientists and engineers seek to develop their innovations and breakthroughs of the future.” Citing research on musicians and London cabbies, the authors report that divergent thinking challenges the brain and in the process changes it for the better, actually enlarging parts of the brain essential to creativity — the corpus callosum, the hippocampus, and the frontal lobe. So absent ample opportunities for divergent thinking, that could result by adding arts, students are less likely to be able to make those future breakthroughs.

And all of the above seem to be excellent reasons to move from STEM to STEAM.

From STEM to STEAM includes lots of practical resources to help you get started on your evolutionary journey. One of my favorites is “Table 1.2: Practices and concepts from the K-12 National Research Council framework (precursor to the NGSS) and skills often acquired in arts-related instruction,” which could become your go to place for generating ideas about art activities that would address the NGSS Scientific and Engineering Practices and the Crosscutting Concepts. Another helpful table provides “comparisons of the traditional approach with an arts-integrated approach,” just to keep us honest.

Also useful are the sample arts integration lessons organized in grade level specific chapters “Chapter 4: Implementing Arts Integration, Grades K-4;” “Chapter 5: Implementing Arts Integration, Grades 5-8;” and “Chapter 6: Implementing Arts Integration, Grades 9-12.” Early childhood educators will welcome the developmentally appropriate recommendations and the research behind them in Chapter 4. However, all K-12 teachers will find the planning tools and templates in these chapters convenient and timesaving. These include Bloom’s Taxonomy Applications, Multiple Intelligences Applications, management planning, lesson plan formats, and a template for designing a STEAM unit across grade levels. Throughout the book the authors provide dozens of activities, and a final section lists STEAM resources (books, films, journals, organizations, and websites).

If you are looking to get your creative juices flowing, two particularly inspiring chapters are “STEAM Lesson Plan Appetizers in Science, Technology and Engineering” and “STEAM Lesson Plan Appetizers in Mathematics.” The authors define “appetizers” as the “beginning of your creative journey.” They are “meant to be the beginning of a complete lesson plan, something to make you want to dive into the ‘full-course’ of creating your own, tailor-made STEAM lesson plan.” They are designed to help you “incubate” your own lesson plan ideas into fully fledged lessons and units to excite and engage your students, and the authors include for each a curriculum objective, an artistic objective, and a social/emotional objective, as well as an assessment, materials, and multiple intelligences and Bloom’s levels addressed.

From STEM to STEAM is crammed with ideas, activities, and resources for teachers who want to infuse their STEM curricula with the arts. More importantly, the book provides the philosophical foundation and scientific research base for doing so — great information to help you make your case with colleagues, administrators, and parents. I can’t recommend the book highly enough. It is well worth your time and money, for the activities alone.

You might also find it interesting to read David Sousa and Tom Pilecki’s blog post, summarizing their position and challenging the supremacy of standardized testing in today’s schools.

A final note: While not every blog post over the coming year will focus on STEM to STEAM, there is, after all, climate change, and we also want to report on great teachers and schools where STEM is blossoming, you’ll find a lot of STEAM in this school year’s blog posts. I also really encourage you to weigh in by leaving comments. Are you intrigued by STEAM? Are you already doing it? What are the benefits? The challenges? What impact do you see on your students? What concerns do you have?

~ Penny

Just click on the link to learn more about Golden Apple’s STEM Institute.

Ten Top Reasons to Move from STEM to STEAM

“The difference between science and the arts is not that they are different sides of the same coin … or even different parts of the same continuum, but rather, they are manifestations of the same thing. The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity.” Mae Jemison (doctor, dancer, and the first African American woman in space)

More than a clever acronym that allows proponents to repurpose clichés like “get a full head of STEAM on” and “full STEAM ahead,” the evolution from STEM to STEAM, integrating science, technology, engineering, math (which do seem to fit together) with the Arts (which may seem like a stretch, given our notion that they represent “two cultures”) makes genuine sense if we want to educate students to their full potential and secure a better economic future for our country.

There are numerous reasons to support moving from STEM to STEAM, but with a nod to former TV talk show host David Letterman and his popular Top Ten lists, here are some of the reasons that persuade me.

10. STEAM fosters teamwork and collaboration between teachers in a school (a good thing) and the transfer of knowledge between disciplines. When a school develops a STEAM focus, it actively restores art and science to a place of importance within the life of the school.

9. STEM + Arts engages a wider range of students. The girl who loves math and discovers the powerful connection between math and music or the boy who grows to enjoy science and gains confidence to engage in it through drawing, his preferred way of learning, are both better served by STEAM. According to artist and educator Ruth Catchen, “the arts are a great learning tool and can serve as an on-ramp to STEM for underrepresented students.”

8. With the challenge of translating scientific, mathematical, technological, and engineering ideas and content into artistic products, STEAM increases the opportunities for problem solving.

Comparative Meshes, Stephen Cartwright (intersecting data sculpture), Dublin Science Gallery, Lifelogging

7. STEAM allows teachers to assess student understanding of complex ideas through the artistic products they produce. Translating science and math concepts into art requires understanding the science and math. Research indicates that it also enhances retention.

6. STEM and the Arts require communication skills to share information with other practitioners and with the public. By communicating scientific ideas, artists can help everyone, even non-scientists, better understand them, and that would include the students themselves.

5. Observation is a key skill of both scientists and artists, and learning how to look is something art teachers regularly teach students to do. Students can then draw to record their observations of the natural world, to capture their understanding of a science concept or to illustrate how they would solve an engineering challenge. In fact, in many STEM classrooms, students are already doing these things, so the distance to STEAM is not far at all.

4. The arts can be a powerful means to spark emotion, adding an important, and sometimes missing, element to STEM. Through art, STEM content can become more personal, more meaningful, more memorable, more engaging, and more fun for students, while providing them opportunities for self-expression.

3. As teachers, we strive to create lessons that move students to higher levels on Bloom’s Taxonomy, encouraging them to develop more advanced intellectual skills. STEAM can help us get there. Creativity sits at the tip of Bloom’s pyramid. Verbs like “design,” “build,” “construct,” “plan,” “produce,” “devise,” and “invent” can generate thinking about how scientific information or data can be represented. Sir Ken Robinson defines creativity as “the process of having original ideas that have value” and suggests it “more often than not comes about through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things,” for example, STEM + Arts.

2. At the conceptual level, both scientists and artists go through the same processes in order to solve problems. It’s no surprise then that some of our greatest thinkers and innovators have been STEAM specialists, long before the acronym. Think Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein. And design thinking, which makes the built world more engaging, aesthetically pleasing, and functional, combines the best of art, technology, and engineering. Think Steve Jobs and Sir James Dyson.

STEAM Specialists

Therefore, adding the Arts to STEM makes it more likely that student creativity will be kicked up another notch … or two or three … allowing the United States to foster the creativity and innovation that will create a strong economy in the 21st century.

1. STEAM gets us closer to reality, to a world that isn’t divided into discrete disciplines, to real world experiences and applications, and to a future that values the importance of innovation and creativity enough to provide all students with opportunities to develop their innate creativity and their ability to find innovative solutions to the problems that face humanity. Art and science can become bridges to each other, and STEAM can be the bridge to a brighter future for us all.

Surely there are other reasons, and I invite you to offer them in comments. There are also challenges to moving from STEM to STEAM as well as counter arguments against doing so, both of which I’ll explore in a future post. In the meantime, you might want to do a little exploring on your own by checking out the articles below.

~ Penny

To get started on the journey from STEM to STEAM, please see the resources compiled by Edutopia.

And if you want to read more about the topic, I invite you to take a look at the following articles:

STEM vs. STEAM: Do the Arts Belong?

STEM vs. STEAM: Why the A Makes All the Difference

A Young Picasso or Beethoven Could Be the Next Edison

STEAM – Not STEM Whitepaper

Experts Make the Case for Adding Arts to STEM

You can learn more about STEM Institute here.