Now that I have had a good night's sleep, I can address the things I gained from this week.
At my school we have STEM program connections class. Students are recommended to participate in the class. My students are the gifted and honors students in 7th grade. The majority of them take the class; those that don't are committed to year long connections classes like band, orchestra, or guitar. After deciding on the activity for my lesson (extracting DNA from strawberries), I went to the STEM instructor for advise.
I asked how I could make my lesson more "STEM" worthy. She said "measuring" is a math component. Building something like a model would be considered engineering, and technology could be anything from doing a virtual lab to using Word to complete a lab write up. I was reminded that lessons of this nature rarely take only one day to complete.
She also told me that STEM can be taught from any of the disciplines. It does not have to be science supported by technology, engineering, and math. She said it could be engineering supported by technology, math, and science or math supported by the other three. I had not thought of that.
Additionally, she concurred that there is no "official" certification for STEM. She had been trained through the Fernbank Science Center here in Atlanta while she worked for them.
I enjoyed that chance to get clarity from someone who teaches the STEM model.
Betsy,
ReplyDeleteI like using DNA extraction activites as well. We use dried peas in my classroom. We probably use similar procedures. My students love this activity.
Betsy,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that writing a lesson plan in this format for every lesson is not possible. However, I do see the other side of things, and I feel it is important to keep the main ideas of the lesson format in mind including the objectives, standards, and what the lesson will look like.
Your STEM instructor did give some great advice and thank you for sharing what they said. Originally it was hard to come up with a lesson idea that was true to STEM. Also, the DNA extraction lab sounds like a lot of fun and would be a great addition to my curriculum.
Thanks!