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.

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: Materials The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle The students work individually or in pairs. Each student or pair needs: Three ten-frames for each s...

In this activity, students determine their own eyesight and calculate what a good average eyesight value for the class would be. Students learn about technologies to enhance eyesight and how engineers play an important role in the development of these technologies.

Short Description:
An open textbook created to improve both teaching and learning vital concepts and techniques in multivariable calculus, one of the fundamental courses across the undergraduate curriculum in science and engineering. The goals of this resource are to help learners develop their geometric intuition about abstract and complex mathematical concepts (e.g., partial derivatives, multiple integrals, vector fields), and train them to make connections between concepts visually (e.g., connecting “vectors” in mathematics with “magnitude” and “direction” in physics) in order to more fully understand engineering, physics and mathematical problems (e.g., differential equations) in their subsequent STEM coursework.

Word Count: 7075

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3-D Mapping | Topography
By Dana Hoppe, Copyright 2018 by Dana Hoppe under Creative Commons Non-Commercial License. Individuals and organizations may copy, reproduce, distribute, and perform this work and alter or remix this work for non-commercial purposes only.

Download: 3-D_MappingTopography.pdfDelete

Topography - Design Challenge
Introduction - Expanded learning opportunities (ELOs) have the potential to be the great equalizer in American education. Regular participation in high quality before and afterschool learning, and enriching summer school programs have been shown to help low-income students succeed academically on par with their more affluent peers. These programs, characterized by strong school-community partnerships, can also help high-performing students stay engaged and achieve even greater levels of understanding. In short, high-quality ELOs are for everyone - and the benefits they create are critical to Nebraska's future economy. - Beyond School Bells I would like to thank Beyond School Bells as well as Nebraska Innovation Studio for providing me with the opportunity, resources, and encouragement to develop this program as an Innovation Fellow. Their willingness to give the intellectual and creative freedom to build upon my ideas and inspirations is what enabled this program to exist. I strongly believe that opportunities such as the Innovation Fellowship are planting the seeds for Nebraska's future. -Dana Hoppe, Program Creator

Concept and Purpose - Interdisciplinary Learning: This program is focused on developing fundamental STEM skills through interdisciplinary learning. The truth is that all areas of study overlap significantly in one way or another, and the cognitive skills that lead to success in one area surely extend to other areas. A recurring theme I have noticed through my personal experience of being and artist as well as a scientist is that I have heavily utilized my creative thinking abilities to solve challenging problems. Imagination and creativity, when combined with background knowledge and understanding, allow us to find solutions that often lie beyond the rigid structure often associated with mathematics and the sciences. Once we begin to see the overlap between these areas, we begin building bridges between them and new ideas and applications emerge from a formerly empty space. The concept of topography was always interesting to me. The strangeness of being able to discern the shape of the land simply from the distance between a hypnotizing assortment of lines on a flat piece of paper was immediately intriguing. How does this flat sheet of abstract shapes translate to the three-dimensional complexity of a mountain, a valley, or a bluff? Topography is the platform of this program because it is a very versatile concept and can be used to create art and models representing a diverse range of fields. The activities in this program focus on having the students follow processes often found in Computer Science. Every process they complete can be thought of as an algorithm, and when they repeat steps, it can be thought of as a loop. They are also recursively calling the same function on each resulting piece they create, mimicking the concept of dynamic programing. The permutation matrix activities will familiarize students with moving through the data in a matrix and adding data to stacks. While they are doing all of these activities, however, there will be no jargon they have to learn, and they will probably not even realize until they take their first Computer Science course that it is even related. To the students, they will simply be creating art in a new and interesting way.

Create 3D printed components for a vegetable/fruit STEM racer!

From the article:

"These 3D printed STEM race cars are the perfect project based learning tool to help teachers get kids excited about science, technology, engineering, math, and nutrition to boot! The racers I show you how to make in this instructable will provide an opportunity to turn almost anything (no kittens or other live things please) into a race car – allowing different sized and weighted objects to illustrate mechanical physics concepts like mass, friction, force, speed, distance, and gravity!"

In this lesson, students expand their understanding of solid waste management to include the idea of 3RC (reduce, reuse, recycle and compost). They will look at the effects of packaging decisions (reducing) and learn about engineering advancements in packaging materials and solid waste management. Also, they will observe biodegradation in a model landfill (composting).

Poster showing a four-leaf clover on stem "Co-operation," with leaves "Wage payer," "Wage earner," "Farmer," and "Consumer." Title continues: The business men and all good citizens in this community are in favor of industrial co-operation. We believe that co-operation is the life-giving stem of prosperity for those who pay wages, those who receive wages and those who spend the wages paid by our American factories, mines, mills, shops, etc. Industrial peace is needed to win this war for democracy. Agitators are breeders of treason and this community has no room for them. Issued by the National Industrial Conservation Movement, 30 Church Street, New York City. Copies supplied on request. No. E-3.

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: Maned wolves are a threatened species that live in South America. People estimate that there are about 24,000 of them living in the wild. The dhole is ...

This is a task from the Illustrative Mathematics website that is one part of a complete illustration of the standard to which it is aligned. Each task has at least one solution and some commentary that addresses important asects of the task and its potential use. Here are the first few lines of the commentary for this task: Which of the following are statistical questions? (A statistical question is one that can be answered by collecting data and where there will be variab...

Unit Summary
In this unit, students develop ideas related to how sounds are produced, how they travel through media, and how they affect objects at a distance. Their investigations are motivated by trying to account for a perplexing anchoring phenomenon — a truck is playing loud music in a parking lot and the windows of a building across the parking lot visibly shake in response to the music.
They make observations of sound sources to revisit the K–5 idea that objects vibrate when they make sounds. They figure out that patterns of differences in those vibrations are tied to differences in characteristics of the sounds being made. They gather data on how objects vibrate when making different sounds to characterize how a vibrating object’s motion is tied to the loudness and pitch of the sounds they make. Students also conduct experiments to support the idea that sound needs matter to travel through, and they will use models and simulations to explain how sound travels through matter at the particle level.
This unit builds toward the following NGSS Performance Expectations (PEs) as described in the OpenSciEd Scope & Sequence: MS-PS4-1, MS-PS4-2. The OpenSciEd units are designed for hands-on learning and therefore materials are necessary to teach the unit. These materials can be purchased as science kits or assembled using the kit material list.

Students will use a perceived weak material to construct something that is surprisingly strong.
Students can experiment with different shapes and configurations to see what holds the most weight.
The cube size is defined, what each student places within each 4x4 square, is up to them.

In this professional development session, we will develop a shared understanding of how formative assessment works and different approaches that have been developed. The material for this resource come from a series of PD sessions on formative assessment developed by the ACESSE team: Philip Bell, Shelley Stromholt, Bill Penuel, Katie Van Horne, Tiffany Neill, and Sam Shaw.We will be updating this Facilitator's Guide for ACESSE Resource A with the most up-to-date information about this resource over time. If you encounter problems with this resource, you can contact us at: STEMteachingtools@uw.edu

Women at NASA are doing some A-MAZE-ING things! Challenge your puzzle skills and learn about women at NASA making a mark in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Celebrate their accomplishments with these printable worksheets.

Student groups create working radios by soldering circuit components supplied from AM radio kits. By carrying out this activity in conjunction with its associated lesson concerning circuits and how AM radios work, students are able to identify each circuit component they are soldering, as well as how their placement causes the radio to work. Besides reinforcing lesson concepts, students also learn how to solder, which is an activity that many engineers perform regularly giving students a chance to be able to engage in a real-life engineering activity.

The Washington Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Youth and the University of Washington Language Learning Center partnered to develop a 5 day series of lessons with accompanying videos for ASL on the topic of Cybersecurity. The content is applicable as a STEM education unit for deaf students, as well as supplementary learning for advanced L2 ASL students. The unit provides applied knowledge (e.g., how to be safe as a user of the internet), basic technical knowledge (e.g., what is malware, key vocabulary), and career opportunities (e.g., the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE), existing ASL representation and the need for more diversity/representation). All videos have English subtitles and dubbing. 

For students interested in studying biomechanical engineering, especially in the field of surgery, this lesson serves as an anatomy and physiology primer of the abdominopelvic cavity. Students are introduced to the abdominopelvic cavity—a region of the body that is the focus of laparoscopic surgery—as well as the benefits and drawbacks of laparoscopic surgery. Understanding the abdominopelvic environment and laparoscopic surgery is critical for biomechanical engineers who design laparoscopic surgical tools.

Students learn about the concepts of accuracy and approximation as they pertain to robotics, gain insight into experimental accuracy, and learn how and when to estimate values that they measure. Students also explore sources of error stemming from the robot setup and rounding numbers.