EdWeek Teacher: Designing a Successful STEM Lesson
Education Week Teacher recently invited me to write about How to Design a Successful STEM Lesson. I think this is my best effort so far to condense STEM lesson design into 1000 words or less!
Strategies and Activities for Grades 4-8
Here’s a Tool to Help “Debug” Your STEM Lessons
Several possible lesson design flaws may be sabotaging your students’ learning. Read my article “How to Debug a STEM Lesson Plan” at MiddleWeb. Then use this tool to see if your lesson passes the bug check. Be sure to give evidence to support your answers.
A Tool to Get Kids Thinking about Engineering
Do you ever talk to students about STEM careers in engineering? We really can’t expect them to appreciate the many interesting opportunities without some awareness raising. Author Anne Jolly has put together a 3-minute student awareness survey that can help.
What’s So New or Different about STEM?
The first thing to wrap your head around as a STEM teacher is this: “What will I be teaching?” When you hear the word STEM, what answer comes to mind? Simply put, STEM is not a subject or a content area. And STEM is not comprised of four independent subjects.
7 Solid Reasons to Involve Students in STEM
Why is everyone talking about the importance of STEM for today’s students? In this excerpt from STEM by Design, author Anne Jolly offers seven compelling reasons for STEM studies, as we think about what it means to live and prosper in the 21st century.
The 8 Criteria for Authentic STEM Programs
Good science, math and technology programs can have many different “looks,” but if we’re going to call a program “STEM” then eight STEM criteria should be at the center. First and foremost, authentic STEM programs incorporate the engineering design process.
28 STEM By Design Teaching Tools
Anne Jolly’s book STEM by Design includes 28 design tools. These resources will help STEM teachers and program leaders create curriculum, write lessons, build student teams, and engage colleagues and communities. You’ll find free downloads at this page!
STEM Problems Students Can Really Address
Problem-solving is fundamental to STEM. But coming up with real-world engineering challenges for students to solve can be tricky. Anne Jolly shares some ideas and resources STEM educators can use to help students select realistic problems they can address.
Teen Inventors Who Are Changing the World
Read about teen inventors who exhibited “STEM skills” as they identified problems or needs in the world and used the engineering design process to search for solutions. Might some of these of these stories inspire your students to “dig deeper” into STEM studies?
How to Analyze a Lesson for STEM Potential
You’ve located a possible STEM lesson, but how can you be sure it’s of good quality? First and foremost the lessons need to be shaped by STEM principles and criteria. Check out Anne Jolly’s specifications and see how she analyzes potential teaching material.
