Want to help prepare your students for the future? It's true, we don't know all of the job paths that will be available to our current students. New jobs are needed as technology is advancing and our needs are changing in education. Without knowing what specific jobs we are teaching our students for (like we did in the past, industrial model of education), we need to teach our students the skills needed to be successful in ANY career. These are their 21st century/6Cs skills - Our district identifies these as: Collaboration, Communication, Content, Critical Thinking, Creative Innovation and Confidence. At the base of these skills, the key points we are teaching are our State and National Standards as well as our building curriculums. How can we teach these ever-important skills to our students AND teach them how to read, write and do math? STEAM! STEAM integrates Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics into an activity, encouraging student engagement and covering curriculum and standards all while naturally presenting and teaching those important 21st century skills our students need for their futures. Eryn and I are kindergarten teachers in a low-income, Spanish speaking district. Our innovation plan is to incorporate STEAM into our schedule daily. Below you will se the benefits of STEAM in the classroom, what resources we are using to help us with our plan, the research behind this style of teaching/learning as well as our proposal to incorporate this into our district. We plan to post our progress and planning to reflect on our innovative change within our district as well as to help others to make a change in their own organizations. With this plan, we will help our students to be prepared for their futures, have FUN learning and to be engaged with our lessons teaching our district/state/national kindergarten content.
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STEAM Thinking Block
By Eryn Watson and Andrea Miller Proposal A daily block of time dedicated to STEAM thinking activities. We plan to introduce Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics activities and thinking skills to our kindergarten students while further developing their 21st century (6 Cs) skills. At the end of the year, students will have the chance to decide on a project they would like to create/build/make to share their learning with others. This year – Start STEAM buddies every other week to prepare for following years full implementation.
Fall 2018 – Take part of our day and dedicate that block to introducing STEAM thinking activities.
Winter 2018/2019 – Fully implement STEAM thinking block, giving students choice over activities.
Spring 2019 – Students will plan a project to share learning with other students, staff and parents. Students will host STEAM sharing day.
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AuthorMy name is Andrea Miller. I am a Kindergarten teacher in the greater Grand Rapids area. I love getting feedback and learning new ways to teach material to my students. I love getting them excited about learning and gaining a love for school. Archives
May 2019
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