Strengthening Rigor in STEM: Putting the R in STEM...Wait, What?

As we embark on our journey to make our children and students more critical thinkers and problem solvers, we often come upon really fun activities for students to engage in.  (Those who know me are cringing because they know how much I hate the word "fun". Fun implies that nothing is being learned, so I much prefer the word "engaging".)

Unfortunately this hazard transfers to students because the engaging activities that we're asking them to participate in really are...um, well, fun.  And that's great, but we want to make sure that we don't lose site of the goal to learn so we need to introduce our R into STEM- Rigor.

How do you Strengthen Rigor in your STEM projects?  In this series, we'll explore different ways to keep students engaged yet ensure that they are learning and stretching both in content and STEM Skills.

STEM Skills Challenge- 10 Challenges to Build STEM Skills Employers Value

In this series, we're focused on the soft skills that employers desire in top candidates.  Otherwise known as 21st century skills or the 4C's- collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and communication- these skills rank consistently at the top of the list.

Here's a recaps of the STEM Skills Challenges that will help students to further develop their soft skills.

• Gum Drop Bridge
• Paperclip Airplanes
• Newspaper Table
• Plastic Cup Pyramid
• Crazy Catapults
• Spacesuit Spuds
• Build a Better Boat
• Souper Structures
• Smooth Sailing
• Save Fred

With these skills, students will no doubt land themselves at the top of the list when going out into the workforce!

STEM Skills Challenge- Save Fred

With employers valuing soft skills like the 4C's (creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking), students need to develop these skills to be good competitors in the workplace.

This week's challenge stresses teamwork and collaboration as students work in teams to rescue a gummy worm named Fred and outfit him with a life preserver to keep him from falling into the water. 

STEM Skills Challenge Handout: Save Fred

STEM Skills Challenge- Smooth Sailing

Throughout this series, we've been talking about the importance of soft skills and how many employers are looking for these key skills when interviewing and hiring.

Recently, a Gallup poll conducted a survey asking Americans whether soft skills should be taught in K-12 schools.  When it comes to teaching critical thinking skills, an overwhelming 80% of those surveyed believe they should be taught.  The other 4C's communication, collaboration, and creativity were highly rated as well.

This week's STEM Skills Challenge will help to build those skills as students design and build a sailboat that will "sail" at least four feet in under one minute.  The catch?  Students will only be allowed to use paperclips, index cards, aluminum foil and tape.  Once teams have designed their boats, students will test them on a table top or a tile floor by placing them in front of a fan. Hopefully, the team has collaborated on a successful design and it's smooth sailing!

STEM Skills Challenge Handout: Smooth Sailing

STEM Skills Challenge- Souper Structures

USA Today College and other leading publications report that employers strongly value soft skills.  The reason?  Many employers say that they can teach the content that is required for a particular position, but can't teach those skills that take time to develop and mature like: teamwork and interpersonal skills, problem solving and analytical skills, and written and verbal communication.

In this week's STEM Skills Challenge, students are challenged to build a structure that will support a full can of soup.  It may sound like an easier challenge, but with only craft sticks, paper, paperclips and glue at their disposal, students will need to work effectively as a team and use their problem solving skills  to plan, design and build their structures.

STEM Skills Challenge Handout: Souper Structures

STEM Skills Challenge- Build a Better Boat

In a recent article by CNBC on Job Skills Gap: The Basics Become a Problem a survey of 500 top executives was conducted.

Of those surveyed, 92% agree that there is a job skills gap and 44% of respondents say the gap is in "soft skills". (And not to digress, but the second most common answer at 22% was lack of technical skills.)

Specifically, the article defines soft skills as communication, critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration.  They didn't use the phrase "21st century skills", but I'm sure you recognize them as such.

So, for this week's STEM Skills Challenge, we're going to build a better boat and build our 4C's (soft skills).  In this challenge, students will use the provided supplies (plastic wrap, straws, tape, and washers) to design and build a boat that will hold 10 one inch diameter washers for at least 30 seconds without sinking. Water will be required to test the boats, but with inquisitive scientists who are focusing on the 4C's, you shouldn't get wet on this ride!

STEM Skills Challenge Handout: Build a Better Boat

STEM Skills Challenge- Spacesuit Spuds

As we focus on STEM skills that can be achieved through short (or long) duration projects, we're aiming to develop skills that employers are seeking.

According to The 9 Attributes Every Employer Desperately Wants, Forbes magazine examines the skills that make a candidate great.  Among the list, some great core STEM skills like natural curiosity, uncompromising excellence, unlimited versatility, self-awareness, and creative problem solving.

This week's challenge allows students to explore the thee core STEM skills as the explore high-impact space debris by designing and building a spacesuit for their astronaut (potato) and testing its effectiveness.

STEM Skills Challenge Handout: Spacesuit Spuds

STEM Skills Challenge- Crazy Catapults

Even though the STEM acronym stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, there are a wide range of skills that this acronym encompasses.

Employers are quick to mention that these are the core skills that they are starting to look for in well qualified candidates. Those "soft skills" are the focus of the STEM Skills Challenges.

This week, students will work with partners to design and build a catapult that will launch mini marshmallows towards a designated target.  In this challenge, students will need to make good materials choices as they can only use three of the four materials provided.  As students experiment, they will work to build a reliable and well-designed catapult, but also establish consistency in hitting a designated target like a bulls eye.  (Teachers may also wish to use small pom poms instead of mini marshmallows.)

STEM Skills Challenge Handout: Crazy Catapults

STEM Skills Challenge- Plastic Cup Pyramid

In aiming to provide students with engaging STEM challenges that push the envelope on developing students' critical thinking skills, this series also aims to develop the STEM skills that employers seek in the workforce.

This week's challenge is the Plastic Cup Pyramid.  Using a rubber band and some string, students will fashion an apparatus that will transfer plastic cups from their current configuration into a pyramid.   This is a great challenge to build communication and teamwork skills. For teams that finish early, reverse the challenge and have students complete it without talking. Now that's a challenge!

STEM Skills Challenge Handout: Plastic Cup Pyramid

STEM Skills Challenge- Newspaper Table

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been sharing the importance of teaching STEM skills and weaving them through your curriculum.  They teach our students how to be persistent problem solvers, how to deepen 21st century skills and how to become leading contenders in the workforce.

Forbes Magazine researched the 10 most critical skills that employers are looking for in candidates and found that the majority of these critical skills are STEM skills. The top three skills? Critical Thinking, Complex Problem Solving, and Judgement and Decision Making.

This week, students will get to practice all three of those skills as they work on this week's Skills Challenge.  Students will work with a team to build a sturdy table out of nothing more than newspaper and masking tape that will hold the most weight.  Much like the real world, teams will be challenged to use only the resources provided and work within design and time requirements.  May the best team of designers win!

STEM Skills Challenge Handout: Newspaper Table

STEM Skills Challenge- Paperclip Airplanes

During this series on STEM Skills Challenges, we are focusing on  the soft-skills that help make our students well-rounded and, according to local businesses, more employable.

This week's challenge is an individual challenge that will exercise student creativity as well as math skills.

For this challenge, students will work individually to design and construct a paper airplane that will carry the maximum amount of paperclips the farthest distance.

This tricky little challenge will require some thought and planning in working with multiple variables, but will help students to think critically about how to obtain the highest point value.

STEM Skills Challenge Handout: Paperclip Airplane

STEM Skills Challenge- Gumdrop Bridge

Employers today are looking for students who have learned how to think and how to problem-solve.  With the adoption of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), we are getting closer to making that a reality, but so many states and districts are still focused on standardized testing (which- surprise-  did not make the list of qualities that employers are looking for in qualified candidates.)

This series focuses on those skills as well as the other "soft-skills" that aren't necessarily spelled our in the curriculum, but make students well-rounded problem solvers.

This week's challenge is the Gumdrop Bridge.  In  this challenge, students work in teams to design and build a bridge that will span 10 inches.  Sounds like a pretty easy challenge, but as students start experimenting with their materials of gum drops and toothpicks, they will find that there is more there than beats the eye.

This fun little challenge encourages students to work on team building, collaboration and communication skills- more of those soft skills- that help students become successful in a workplace environment.

STEM Skills Challenge Handout: Gumdrop Bridge

STEM Skills Challenge Series

What if STEM stood for something different? As you know, the actual acronym stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, but aside from content, the concept encompasses many more essential skills like: problem solving, critical thinking, team-building, self-esteem, self-motivation and more.

At a recent symposium in the Seattle area, business leaders were surveyed regarding the skills, attitudes, attributes, and aspirations that they feel are the most important to the success of students in the future. Among the results?

• Critical thinking, learning, and analytical problem solving
• Communication
• Adaptability
• Collaboration and teamwork
• Self-direction and self-awareness
• Technical skills and computer literacy
• Fundamentals of education including math, science, and English
• Creativity
• Cultural competence and global awareness
• Emotional intelligence

This series on STEM Skills Challenges will harness the power of STEM challenges and focus on these essential success skills that our students need to be effective in the STEM workforce.

STEM Essentials- Developing Effective STEM Units

In this series we have learned how to plan and develop an effective STEM unit.  Planning a unit like this is very time-consuming if done right, but the outcomes and student progress will be well worth the effort!

Here are the basic steps in the process:

• Develop a Plan for your STEM unit
• Craft Different Types of Assessments for before, during and after your project
• Create a Rubric (at least one!) for assessing students throughout the project and at the conclusion of it
• Use the Engineering Design Process to plan the remaining lessons that fit with your curriculum objectives
• Communicate Results through written reports as well as oral presentations
• Redesign and Debrief to assess student understanding and any misconceptions

Each step contains a basic explanation...and a free handout to help you plan your own effective STEM unit!

STEM Essentials- Redesigning and Debriefing

In this series, we're learning how to plan a proper STEM unit.  If you've been following along, you'll note that there are many moving parts!  So far, we have discussed how to develop a plan, craft different types of assessments, create a rubric, use the Engineering Design Process to plan the remaining lessons, and how to communicate results.

The last two steps that we'll talk about is Redesigning and Debriefing.  These are separate steps focusing on different goals, but because they share some common elements and they both NEED to take place at the end of the unit, we'll talk about them together.

Redesigning
After students have communicated their results and shared them with the class, it's important for students to have time to redesign.  This doesn't need to be a whole unit withing itself, but they should at least have an hour or so to work on improvements to their design.  This allows for a couple of things.  It allows:

• Students to process what other teams have shared and leverage that new information into the redesign of their own product.  
• Any team that was unsuccessful to implement a workable solution based on new information shared (and thus generate some success)
• Students a chance to take some risks that they wouldn't have taken prior to presenting the project to the class.  They can push the envelope without any ramifications.  (This is where some GREAT learning can take place.)

And as a side benefit, giving students the opportunity to redesign their products shows the importance of collaboration and communication amongst the different teams (and also usually sparks more creativity!)

Debriefing
Debriefing shares some of these same elements, but it is not the same.  Debriefing takes place at the end of the project and allows the teacher to pull everyone together to talk turkey.  This is an opportunity for students to:

• Share any new information that they have learned and discuss how it relates to the project
• Ask clarifying questions that may help them further their learning or connect the dots
• Discuss possible next steps or extensions of the project

This is an opportunity for teachers to:

• Review key findings and objectives for the project
• Clarify any misunderstandings that still may exist
• Further tie the learning to real-life (I like to talk about STEM careers that would contribute to a project like the one just completed)

As an aside, the debriefing can provide the teacher with key information such as insight on how to make the project better the next time and informal assessment based on discussion.

STEM Essentials Handout: Debriefing Strategies

How Does STEM Improve Student Learning?

Research shows us the implementing STEM education does indeed improve student learning.  The real question here is HOW?

STEM education is a very interesting blend of interpersonal skills, and content skills- both of which are needed and desired in the ever-growing STEM workforce regardless of if the level of education the job requires.

In addition to meeting grade level curriculum requirements, STEM helps students to grow in areas that aren't necessarily measured by the state curriculum or even classroom assessments, but that are necessary skills that contribute to a student's self-worth and confidence.

Some of those interpersonal skills that we often overlook due to all of the administrative pressures are communication, critical thinking skills collaboration, project management, decision making, problem solving, stress management, etc.  STEM naturally build these skills by placing students in real-life project situations that not only require their understanding, but also their application.  As a result, it makes STEM education a powerful tool for students and teachers.

STEM Essentials- Communicating Results

In working to create a comprehensive STEM unit plan, we've talked about how to develop a plan, craft different types of assessments, create a rubric, and use the Engineering Design Process to plan the remaining lessons. 

One of the last components to put in place is a mechanism for students to communicate their findings. It's important for students to investigate and record their daily notes and data as well as create formal reports of their discoveries.

For this component, there are very many options.  Teachers use a high-tech mechanism and set up a Moodle Site or a Wikispaces workspace for students that will allow them to develop and refine 21st century skills. Teachers can also use a low-tech mechanism and ask students to communicate their results through Science Notebooks (aka paper) that will allows students to focus more in effective communication. Because of the many options available, the teacher should choose the best method of delivery, factoring in the age-appropriate skill level of students and the curriculum/ skills that will be the main focus of the project.

In addition to written communication, it's a good idea to  have an oral component like a presentation, interview, or skit as well.  Combining written and oral reporting helps students to enhance their communication skills and make them more relevant as presenting and public speaking are important skills students need when preparing for the workforce.

STEM Essentials Handout: Science Notebook

STEM Essentials- Decision Making

In this series, we've been investigating how to best plan a STEM unit.  We have developed a plan, crafted different types of assessments, created a rubric, and used the Engineering Design Process in planning the remainder of the lessons.

We've also discussed some of the non-linear steps that will help put some structure into your STEM project  like creating and using STEM Role Cards and teaching students how to develop great ideas.

After students generate a list of possible ideas, how should they determine which one is the best one to use?  Most student groups are likely to take a vote, flip a coin, or even come to a deadlock if no one wants to budge from their own idea.  Arming students with best-practice ways to make decisions is key and will help them with the project at hand as well as with life decisions.

One strategy that students can use to help make decisions is is simple Pro/Con Chart.  Requiring students to write down pros and cons will help them to clarify their idea more fully and communicate their data through writing.

Another great strategy is a Decision Matrix.  In this model, students are asked to think through their top ideas by answering key questions that will help them to determine which idea is the best solution.

STEM Essentials Handout: Decision Making Pro/Con Chart, Decision Matrix

FREE Workshop- Engineers as Educators

In my work with AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics), we offer a FREE workshop called Engineers as Educators.  Engineers as Educators is a community outreach workshop designed to help our Professional Members learn how to work with K-12 students (in formal or informal settings).  Please note- You do not need to be an AIAA member to attend.

Here's the workshop description:

When a paratrooper pulls that rip cord, what’s on his mind? Calculations about acceleration, speed, load capacity, and gravity? Probably not.

To you, these calculations are elementary. But to the elementary student, parachuting is ‘AWESOME’ and the formulas behind it are complicated. How can you bridge that gap?

Make that leap. Pull that educator rip cord within you and share with students your knowledge as an aerospace professional. 

AIAA will teach you to inspire students about the marvels of aerospace engineering. Share your passion in a manner students can relate to. Register now for the Engineers as Educators Workshop and you’ll walk away armed with the tools to help you plan and execute powerful experiences and excite the next generation of engineers.
Learn how to:

• Connect your work to classroom objectives
• Plan memorable experiences
• Use simple and clear vocabulary
• Engage students with hands-on experiences

And the fine details:
Who: Everyone (You do not need to be an AIAA member to attend)
What: AIAA Engineers as Educators Workshop (includes lunch)
When: Saturday September 7, 2013 from 10:30 AM to 1:30 PM PDT 
Where:  Kirkland Library Meeting Room, 308 Kirkland Ave., Kirkland, WA 98033
Why: To learn activities, tips and tricks that you can use when working with K-12 students

The workshop is completely FREE, but you must register in advance. You can use the link above or click here to register.  If you're in the greater Seattle area, we'd love to see you there! 

When do I "do" STEM and still Teach Everything Else?

Classroom teachers are so overwhelmed with administrative duties, curriculum demands, district assessments, NCLB, state testing, implementation of CCSS (and the list goes on).  So, when these folks ask this question, they are most likely asking partly out of desperation and partly out of sarcasm.

The good news is that once you've identified how to locate resources and implement STEM, this one is a piece of cake!  Locating resources that will fit into your curriculum will help you to consolidate and actually make your planning, implementation and assessment easier.

Here's how its done using the Mars Rover Celebration Curriculum Module as an example:

Planning: Once you've identified the resource you'll be using, flip to the curriculum section.  Curriculum developed by reputable people and organizations will have an entire section devoted to the standards alignment.  Most curriculum developers are in the midst of revising these tables to include CCSS, but the state for which the curriculum was developed for should be there as well as the National standards.  Then, go through the tables making note of which standards your state or district require you to teach.

Implementation: Once you've finished your coffee while looking over the curriculum section of your resource, you can begin to either consolidate skills with other lessons and projects or spiral them in a meaningful way to help students further develop these skills.

Assessment:  Teachers tell me that this one is the toughie with STEM projects.  When teachers talk about assessments, they generally mean tests, but in the real world, you don't have to take an algebra test next week.  An assessment can be any piece of work that helps students to display competency and/or mastery.  Students who participate in this project will end up creating, writing and preparing numerous different artifacts that can easily be used as assessments- Science Notebooks, Rover Manual, Presentation Skit, Mars Rover Model....

Now that you know the basic steps, get started!  Your students will be excited to participate in class and will learn a wealth of real-world skills in addition to their grade-level curriculum.