PUTTING OUR IDEAS TO ACTION
We had an idea. We wanted to transform STEM into STEAM. We needed to engage students in a way where they needed to learn something new and not just know it and forget it. We dove into the curriculum in both Grade 5 and 6 and from there we identified areas of focus. For Grade 5, the focus would be on societies in Social Studies and Putting it in Motion unit in Science. For Grade 6, students would focus on enhancing their mathematical processes by learning the art and skill of computer programming.
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But, where was STEAM? After completing research on STEAM education and collaborating with each other, we decided to implement this project through role play. The Grade 5 students would take on the role of becoming members of a new society where they would plan and build their society. This would include learning about the differences between the roles in the society, what a functioning society would need in terms of infrastructure, and how to plan and build it. The Grade 5's would realize that having a secure and safe society was necessary, and would then include the Grade 6 students by hiring them as their technology (security) experts to come in and help them plan ways to keep their society safe. The Grade 6 students would then decide what they would need to provide both ground and air security to the society. Here, students would learn how to build and program moving robots, as well as, program drones.
Bringing it all together
Elaina began her part of the project by researching computer programming. Implementing computer programming into this project became an essential element as it was something that was going to be brand new to (most) students. It provided a medium to students to learn something new. Computer programming would be used to write programs for the robots and the drones that would be used in the Grade 5 society. At the beginning of the project, Elaina did not have any prior experience or knowledge on this, but quickly found substantial research and evidence to prove that implementing computer programming in the curriculum was highly beneficial to enhancing students skills in the areas communication, problem solving, reasoning, and logical thinking.
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