Full STEAM Ahead!

Full STEAM Ahead!
Last month my classroom was buzzing with excitement as we embarked on our first engineering project.  One of the biggest challenges I faced when designing the lesson was finding enough instructional time during the week for science.  The schedule I have this year requires a shared block of time for both science and social studies.  Like many teachers, I feel the stress of trying to fit it all in.  The primary focus has been on Language Arts and math,  leaving little time for social studies or science. Because time is limited I knew that I wanted to create an engineering project that would build upon the students’ learning in ELA and Math.  This way I could extend students’ understanding of science and engineering concepts during other content blocks.
Crosscutting Concept 2: Cause and Effect:   Events have causes, sometimes simple, sometimes multifaceted.  Deciphering causal relationships, and the mechanisms by which they are mediated, is a major activity of science and engineering. For this project, I gave my students the following engineering design challenge:  “Build a prototype of a house that can withstand an earthquake simulation.  Your model must show a cause and effect relationship.”  There are 7 crosscutting concepts (ccc).   Most of the CCCs would have fit nicely into this lesson.  I chose Cause and Effect as the first crosscutting concept to introduce my students to because it is already familiar to them in other contexts. After deciding which CCC I wanted to focus on, I was able to create a list of prompts to help guide my students learning.  I found a couple of great resources to help me start. Take a look at what I found: This link has amazing prompts divided into each of the 7 CCCs. http://stemteachingtools.org/assets/landscapes/STEM-Teaching-Tool-41-Cross-Cutting-Concepts-Prompts.pdfr This link gives symbols you can use with each of the CCCs. https://crosscutsymbols.weebly.com/ Here is a great Google slidedeck with graphic organizers for each CCC.  (Tip:  Make a copy of the slidedeck and save to your drive if you want to edit them.) https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1YNl4U76UaIEiLR2zD2QaAsgrO515lWFpCsGSbZgKsBo/edit#slide=id.p What Worked Students were really excited about this lesson.  The engagement was off the charts!  It was a great motivator throughout the week.  Connections were made to cause and effect relationships in the stories we were reading.  We even looked for cause and effect in math (error analysis).  I found the graphic organized mentioned above to be a helpful way to discuss cause and effect.   What I Would Change Since this was our first project the students needed a lot of time to make their prototypes.  Only one group was able to finish their prototype and modify their design.  The rest of the students finished but did not get to modify their work.  They gave a verbal description of what they would change instead. Let’s make connections, Alina Padilla