From Getting Smart, here are 12 ways to start teaching STEM

Want more STEM experiences for your students but don’t know where to start? Want to infuse art into science and boost STEAM experiences?
Before exploring how to do STEM, let’s define what it is. Everybody teaches science and math—STEM adds technology and engineering to the equation; STEAM adds art. Common elements of quality STEM learning include:
• Design-focus: using design tools and techniques to attack big problems or opportunity (challenge-based, problem-based learning).
• Active application: applying knowledge and skills to real-world situations and constructing or prototyping solutions to challenges (maker, project-based learning).
• Integration: real world problems aren’t limited to a discipline—solutions almost always draw from many fields.

1st grade science key vocabulary English/Spanish translations (space to add drawing as well).

This is a template for lessons developed by the San Francisco Unified School District SLANT Cohort. (Replace this text with a short description of your SLANT-inspired lesson. Then add learning goals, keywords, standards alignments, subjects, and grades in their respective fields.)

I have added an extension for students to explore Ekphrastic Poetry.

This is a template for lessons developed by the San Francisco Unified School District SLANT Cohort. (Replace this text with a short description of your SLANT-inspired lesson. Then add learning goals, keywords, standards alignments, subjects, and grades in their respective fields.)

Abigail Harrison as known as Astronaut Abby, STEAM education advocate and founder of The Mars Generation nonprofit talks about her career and what she thinks about the future of space travel.

I wanted to make a realistic animatronic heart, and as I was developing the 3D printed mechanism I used a sock to try and get a vague idea of how the silicone skin would move once the design was finished. Since the silicone casting turned out to be quite challenging and very expensive, the sock test gave me the idea to instead use a slightly elastic fabric to make a plush heart design, which could be fitted over the 3D printed mechanism.

This project is very simple on the 3D printing/assembly/electronics side, but I'd recommend you have a little sewing experience because, as a sewing amateur, I'm not 100% confident in my patterns. A sewing machine is not necessarily required and a lot of the sewing is by hand anyway, but it would certainly be useful!

While taking a walk around their school, neighborhood, park, or nature trail, students (suggested ages 3-8) will be challenged to create a map of the 'nature treasures' they discover. Students will make thumbnail sketches and brief descriptive notes of what they observe.

This activity is adapted from "Nature's Treasure Map" (page 34) found in "Opening the World Through Nature Journaling" a curriculum by Jack Laws, that integrates science, art and writing for grade 4-8 classroom.

Artists are often particularly keen observers and precise recorders of the physical conditions of the natural world. As a result, paintings can be good resources for learning about ecology. Teachers can use this lesson to examine with students the interrelationship of geography, natural resources, and climate and their effects on daily life. It also addresses the roles students can take in caring for the environment. Students will look at paintings that represent cool temperate, warm temperate, and tropical climates.
In this lesson students will: Identify natural resources found in particular geographic areas; Discuss ways in which climate, natural resources, and geography affect daily life; Apply critical-thinking skills to consider the various choices artists have made in their representations of the natural world; Make personal connections to the theme by discussing ways they can be environmental stewards; Identify natural resources found in particular geographic areas; Discuss ways in which climate, natural resources, and geography affect daily life; Apply critical-thinking skills to consider the various choices artists have made in their representations of the natural world; Make personal connections to the theme by discussing ways they can be environmental stewards.

Grade level: graduate students, advanced undergrads, persons with analyzed research results

Course length: 1 semester, 4-6 months

Objective: This course empowers scientists to engage with their own data, each other, and the public through art. Through collective brainstorming, prototyping, and feedback from professional artists, students will create a project that expresses their own research through any artistic medium of their choice. The course typically culminates in a public art exhibition where students interact with a general audience to discuss their research, art, and what it means to be a scientist.

This booklet about teaching through art education integrates topics such as peace, tolerance and interpersonal communication as well the treatment of psychological aspects in a post conflict environment through creativity and artistic language.

This lesson can be done in two 30 mintues whole group sessions.  It could be done in a face to face setting, or used for virtual learning.  This lesson analzyes the work of Piet Mondrian while reviewing 2D shapes. 

This open textbook was created with the support of an ALG Textbook Transformation Grant. Topics include art integration, music integration, physical education / dance integration, and the theoretical foundations of arts integration in education

Find out about examples of arts integration strategies that are adaptable to a wide range of curriculum areas.

This resource is a collection of monthly at-home STEAM challenges that students in Grades K-6 can compete using objects found around the house.

This resource is a collection of monthly at-home STEAM challenges that students in Grades K-6 can compete using objects found around the house.

Novel representations and diverse perspectives can reveal new insights into complex systems, and can support rich understandings of the world. In this activity, students will identify and analyze the choices artists and scientists make when creating representations of living or non-living natural objects. This process will help students recognize the potential and place for their own articulation of how the world works. After drawing from nature, students will reflect on the process of representing information, then compare their drawings with that of a 16th-century artist. Students will consider what is included and what is excluded, and hypothesize about larger contexts and systems.

Kentucky reading teacher Ashley Judd uses augmented reality to get her students excited about learning. The PBS Digital Innovator says she has seen student engagement soar since she started using more technology in her classroom because students are already excited about using iPads and other devices. In this video, students use an augmented reality app to create an interactive memory book.

This lesson is a classroom activity where students learn to use their balance knowledge to create a beautiful mobile.

This lesson explores several of the recording mediums used throughout the early 20th century. Along the way, students learn how sound waves travel, how the human brain converts those waves to recognizable sound and how inventors learned to capture them on wax, magnetic tape, and finally as digital information. From there, this lesson then investigates the creative impulses and scientific developments that turned multitrack recording from a dream to a reality. Students also get hands-on experience using the Soundbreaking Mixing Board TechTool, which allows them to be sound engineers, playing with "the mix" of a multitrack studio.

This lesson investigates how electrifying the guitar was a contributing factor to the emergence of a sound that came to define Rock and Roll and, to a large extent, mid-20th century American popular culture. Featuring content from the PBS Soundbreaking episode, "Going Electric," which includes the guitar playing of luminaries Charlie Christian, Pete Townsend, Muddy Waters and Jimi Hendrix, this lesson examines the spirit of curiosity, adaptation and invention that characterized the early 1950s and in the 1960s led to the guitar's emergence as a versatile and attractive instrument for musicians and as the quintessential Rock and Roll icon.