Simple STEAM for Teachers

In real World, jobs are interdisciplinary; rarely do they require a single skill. Because some jobs no longer exist, teachers should prepare children for the future job and successful careers by enhancing four critical points in early childhood which are: creativity, communication, teamwork/collaboration and critical thinking. They should develop the identified skills and give children the best opportunity to be prepared by STEAM.

STEAM means: S for science, T for technology, E for engineer, A for arts and M for math. The key of optimizing learning is to integrate activities instead of teaching as individual subjects. STEAM learning help children to investigate questions, solve problems and think potential improvements. 

One of the best way to show integration and how we approach a STEAM lesson is with a sample activity. For example, "Straw Rockets" activity can be done by any students if he/she follow step by step. The child should understand the goal then identify what he/she needs. Then the child should talk like an expert by using enriching vocabulary and speak the language. But one of the most important aspects of STEAM activity is asking open-ended question that develop curiosity, creativity, critical thinking and course communication skills. After doing the activity, the child starts to predict a hypothesis and ask more questions. Then he/she integrates the hypothesis and records what he/she discovers. STEAM learning can open new jobs in future such as aerospace engineering, astrophysics astronomy, biomechanics nanotechnology and many others.

Everyday language supports STEAM thinking by asking to many question : "what do you see, what do you hear, what are your prediction, what do you notice, what is changing ... and so many questions" that encourage child's curiosity to discover  more and more.Also STEAM learning improves when different senses are engaged “50% of what we hear and see,70% of what we discuss with others, 80% of what we experience, and 95% of what we teach others”.

From my point of view, children love to discover and experiment new things that encourage his/her curiosity. Also STEAM learning will enhance children’s interest to find their passion and build confidence to try different things. So STEAM happens naturally in young children as the explore and investigate the world around them in which they are exercising other skills: focusing attention, motivation and problem solving with a higher level of thinking.

Presented by: Marnie Forestieri, CEO and founder of Young Innovators; and Dr. Debby Mitchell, EdD is a curriculum writer for Young Innovators.

Sponsored by:  Kaplan  Early Learning Company, www.kaplanco.com

EDUC561 Reflection

EDUC561 is an amazing course, it helps us provide the credibility of being a teacher. It reflects many ways for making learning and teaching fun and build a valuable relationship between the teacher and the student.

In this course, we learned how to create a professional  exams and use this form for any surveys and so many other things.  Also it helps us arrange the references from books and articles in a very easy and professional way not the manual one. Even though I didn't like the webinar because the topics are really far from my science major but learning how to create and work on it makes me feel more professional by learning how to create new and updated ways of teaching.

When I first registered this course I was worried because it uses a lot of technology techniques and I'm not the technology type of person, but then I learned that using the application cited is actually fun and entertaining; it made me see technology from a whole other side of view.