STEM—It’s not too early

1. STEM—It’s not too early Diane Kahanek Village Elementary Georgetown, Texas

2. Who I am • Fourth Grade teacher for 13 years • Technology Facilitator at a PK-5 campus for the last 5 years • Mother of 3 girls • Passionate about science, technology, and Texas history. • Advocate for children with special needs

3. My Girls

4. Who Are You? • Elementary? • Teachers? • Technology Specialists? • Administrators?

5. The integration of: Science Technology Engineering Mathematics What is STEM?

6. Why Integrate STEM? Stimulates curiosity Taps into student use of higher level thinking skills Engages learners Manipulate concepts into any content area

7. Challenges of Implementing STEM Curriculum in the Elementary Classroom • Not enough time in the day • Low priority objectives • Difficult to measure results • Teachers unfamiliar with where to start • Lack of resources and materials

8. Components of Effective Integrated STEM Curriculum • Relevant Problems: • make learning meaningful • Authentic Projects: • promote higher level thinking • Hands-on, Experiential Learning: • Increase retention of experience • Opportunities to Design and Create: • motivate students to communicate learning • Supportive Administration • Teachers collaborate for STEM learning

9. MARE in May • Marine Activities and Resources Education • This is how we got started. A School-wide STEM program for one month. • Kinder—Ponds • First—Rocky Seashore • Second—Sandy Beaches • Third—Wetlands • Fourth—Kelp Forest • Fifth—Open Ocean

10. MARE: • MARE is a whole-school interdisciplinary science program at the Lawrence Hall of Science, including events that immerse your whole school—faculty, students and families—in the study and celebration of the ocean. • http://lawrencehallofscience.org/mare/

11. The curriculum addresses standards in Earth, physical and life science, as well as inquiry ("investigation and experimentation" in California); language arts, environmental issues, art, and music. • As students progress through the years, they build upon concepts and processes learned in previous years. Classroom assessments within the curriculum activities allow teachers to evaluate student performance.

12. End of Unit Goal • Every grade level will be working towards creating presentations for a MARE Museum. We set up 2 days of visitors walking through our hallways and students leading discussions or presentations of what they have learned.

13. Learning.com • We use Learning.com’s products to help our teacher’s plan our MARE unit. • Aha! Math • Aha! Science • Easy Tech • Sky—to customize the curriculum in the unit

14. Kindergarten—Life in a Pond • The Kindergarten Ponds Curriculum explores the concepts of habitats, water as a home, properties of water, adaptations, and food chains/interrelationships.

15. Kid Pix • Activity 5: Adopt A Playground : Students are taken on a “virtual tour” of their teacher’s backyard as they look at a map of the teacher’s yard and listen to a narrative description of the map. Students then help make a map of their own schoolyard, adding all of the elements that they can remember to an outline of the schoolyard. They are taken on a trip around the school and additional items are added to the map, including litter if any is found.

17. First Grade: Rocky Seashore • The First Grade MARE curriculum explores what a habitat is, how animals and plants use adaptations to live in extreme environments, and some of the different forms of rocks that make a seashore. Students study live crayfish and become familiar with common rocky seashore life.

18. First Grade--Word doc, one slide of ppt or Blabberize • Build a Rocky Seashore: Students widen the focus of their study of the rocky seashore habitat as they play Seashore Bingo and sort animal pictures into the zones where the animals actually live on the shore. They then build a 3-D rocky seashore and place organisms in the correct tidal zones. Students work as individuals and in groups to create a Field Trip Guide for other classes to use when visiting their rocky seashore classroom.

19. Second Grade: Sandy Beach • The Second Grade MARE curriculum includes themes of the rock cycle and invertebrates.

20. Math activity: sort, classify and graph--Excel • Beach Bucket Scavenger Hunt: They work in small cooperative groups to explore a simulated sandy beach in a plastic tub that is littered with beach drift and debris. Through a sorting activity, they discover that biotic objects found on the sandy beach can be grouped into those that represent evidence of plant live, evidence of animal life and evidence of humans. They discover the differences between abiotic and biotic objects.

21. Third Grade: Wetlands and Estuaries • The Third Grade MARE curriculum includes themes of organism diversity, habitat edges, and animal adaptations.

22. 3rd Grade--Create a poster: Publisher, Kid Pix or Glogster • Students are guided through a full open-ended inquiry in five sessions. Students are first introduced to an Inquiry Journal and focus on making observations, sketching and asking questions about crayfish and categorize them as investigable or not. Small groups of students choose their question and plan their investigation.

23. 4th Grade: The Kelp Forest • The Fourth Grade MARE curriculum includes themes of Light and Color Underwater, Fish Adaptations, Sea Otters, Seaweed, and Human Uses of Seaweed.

24. Seasons of the Kelp Forest • Students research how the kelp forest changes throughout the Seasons. Then, they create a presentation. • Kid Pix • Power Point • Prezi

25. 5th Grade: Open Ocean • The Fifth Grade MARE curriculum includes themes of global interconnectedness of the oceans and the productivity that supports large animals of the seas.

26. Excel • Activity 5: Ice Cubes 1 Session Temperature and salinity are combined to look at the interactions that create ocean currents. Students make predictions about whether ice cubes will melt faster in fresh water or salt water and explain their reasoning.

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28. MARE and STEM • S: Life systems, water cycle, seasons • T: Graphics, presentations, research, graphing, and publishing • E: Constructing 3D models of organisms out of paper and misc. supplies • M: Counting, sorting, measuring, problem solving

29. Integrating STEM • Your lessons plans may already hold the answer. • Engineering basics are: brainstorming, planning, creating, modifying and team problem solving.

30. Web 2.0 Tools • Blabberize • Wall WisherDo More>EmbedAnimotoVideo Toolbox>Embed • http://animoto.com/education/case_studies#watershed • VoicethreadMenu>Embed http://voicethread.com/community/library/4th_graders_study_plants_in_collaboration_with_Pakistani_students VOKII've use the Wordpress formatLarge>Get Code • www.EdHeads.org • http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/ • NeoK12This site has many videos and games.  Many of the videos are You Tube Videos that can be embedded (without the You Tube Site). • PBS VideoHover over the video and Click embed • TAGXEDOword clouds • NASA VideosAre embeddable • Museum Box: http://museumbox.e2bn.org/creator/viewer/show/34 • Learning.com, AHA!Science, Aha! Math and Easy Tech • Teacher Tube • You TubeClick Embed and Uncheck Related Videos • Presentations in Google Docs are Embeddable Collaborate and Share>Publish/Embed • Forms in Google Docs are Embeddable • SlideSharea collection of slideshows that people have created and can be embedded or downloaded. • Wall WisherDo More>Embed • Glogster.eduMy DashboardScroll down to the bottom and look for the code • Prezi

31. Imagine Mars Project: Reflect • This step asks students to explore what they value about their own communities. To create a vibrant community on Mars, it helps to know what works right here on Earth. Students will investigate what people like and dislike about their community. They will learn how communities deal with challenges. And they will learn how communities provide essential services. • This step is the foundation of Imagine Mars. Encourage students to think about their inquiries in this step as background rather than a blueprint for the Mars community they will design. All good engineers build on the successes of their predecessors. Students can think of this reflect step as “doing their homework” to prepare for subsequent steps in Imagine Mars.

32. Grades 3–5 • Activity: What Makes a Good Community • Students design and conduct a survey to learn what aspects of community life residents value most.

33. Imagine • Having researched what makes a good community on Earth, students will envision a new community on Mars. There’s a lot to consider. What will they need to survive on the Red Planet and how will life be different there than on Earth? What will people in the community do? How will they work together? How much “stuff” can you take along?

34. Grades 3–5 • Activity: In the Path of Explorers • Students investigate one of four explorations: the settlement of Jamestown, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s1914 Antarctic Crossing, Apollo 11, and the Alvin Submersible. They use a worksheet to guide their research in producing a Museum Box that details the expedition they chose.

35. Journal: Pack Your Bag for Mars • Students plan what they can carry on a trip to Mars and convert the weights of objects on Earth and on Mars, which differ because of the gravity variance between the two planets.

36. Discover • In this step, students get into the meat of what living and working on Mars will be like. They will immerse themselves in all things Martian and examine how things such as communicating, traveling, getting essential supplies, and staying healthy will be different on the Red Planet than on Earth. They will use factual data gathered in numerous space missions to help them understand the realities of being on Mars. Information gathered in this step will be crucial in the Create step in which students build their model community.

37. Grades 3–5 • Activity: Mars Vital Stats • Students research and identify basic facts about Mars and produce a Glogster poster that illustrates the findings.

38. Journal: Questions, Questions • Students conduct research and answer questions about living on Mars that they compile into a single document to use in later steps of the curriculum. • Curriculum/STEM Connections • Language Arts: Students read and assess informational text and write journal entries. • Science: Students use facts about conditions on Mars to solve challenges of living there. • Technology/Engineering: Students refine ways of meeting people’s needs that will work in the Mars environment.

39. Create • In this step, students build their community models. They will use all of the information gathered in the previous three steps to fabricate a model that represents not only how people will live on Mars, but also the important cultural aspects of the community. Students need to keep in mind that the models are being designed to share with others in your school, community, or more widely. All aspects of STEM come into play in this step, and students will also use technology to create 3-D models of their community.

40. Grades 3–5 • Build Your Mars Community, 3–5 • Students design a 3-D model of their Mars community using research completed in prior activities and journals using use Google Earth and Google SketchUp to plan the community’s location and design their models.

41. Journal: It’s Monumental • Students explore what makes a good monument and design one for the Mars community.

42. Share • It’s time for students to share the fruits of their labor in this final step of Imagine Mars. Students should be intimately familiar with the challenges to living on Mars, and they also know about solutions that can make it possible. They’ve created a showcase of their Mars community in their models. Now, like any good scientist, engineer, or mathematician, they need to share their findings with others. The purpose is two-fold: to explain how such an endeavor might be possible scientifically and realistically and to respond to questions others may have about it. • Your students are now the experts, and they’ll get to show off their acumen as they present their community models to fellow students, parents, the community, and more.

43. Questions??? • Contact information: • kahanekd@georgetownisd.org • diane@kahanek.net • http://villagemare.wikispaces.com/ http://lawrencehallofscience.org/mare/