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.

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!

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.

A community mural; K-5 students, artists, teachers, business people, and community leaders worked together to create a mural.

This is a really fun and informative lesson that I do with my high school Programming/technology class to break up the monotony of beginner programming. However; this lesson can be used and applied in essentially any class and for many purposes, and to address many areas. One of the other really nice things about this lesson is that it can be extended to hit many points including physics, math, and advanced engineering.

Throughout the building period, I would present teams with a challenge (puzzle, build, etc…) and the first team to complete it would get a prize. It could be more modification time, extra materials, etc…)

The materials (including hot glue guns) can be purchased at Wal Mart or a similar store for around $20-25, if ordering through your district isn’t an option. With those purchases, it gives you a lot more materials than needed which can be used for additional similar projects.

This is a really fun and informative lesson that I do with my high school Programming/technology class to break up the monotony of beginner programming. However; this lesson can be used and applied in essentially any class and for many purposes, and to address many areas. One of the other really nice things about this lesson is that it can be extended to hit many points including physics, math, and advanced engineering.

Throughout the building period, I would present teams with a challenge (puzzle, build, etc…) and the first team to complete it would get a prize. It could be more modification time, extra materials, etc…)

The materials (including hot glue guns) can be purchased at Wal Mart or a similar store for around $20-25, if ordering through your district isn’t an option. With those purchases, it gives you a lot more materials than needed which can be used for additional similar projects.

Striking images can leave lasting impressions on viewers. In this lesson, students make text-self-world connections to a nature- or science-related topic as they collaboratively design a multimedia presentation.

Problem solving is often guided by disciplinary frames of reference, which can restrict our ability to see other possibilities. This exercise uses object-based learning to underscore the idea that there is more than one way of analyzing and knowing the world, and that through multiple ways of knowing, we develop more complex understandings and new solutions. Through the process of critique, an essential part of visual-arts pedagogy, students practice analyzing and reflecting both individually and in groups.

This project is a science based unit that incorporates using a makerspace. Students work together to research a local bird species and design and build a birdhouse to meet the specific needs of their species.

Learn how to make lightweight, flexible 3D printed masquerade masks! These are great masks as they make it look like the design is tattoed on your face or floating on your face.

The 200-inch Hale Telescope (historically known as the “Palomar Telescope”) at the Palomar Observatory in California represents an amazing feat of engineeringand ingenuity, the result of decades of trial and error.The primary sources in this project describe the last great hurdle in the Hale Telescope’s construction: successfully transporting the 40-ton, 200-inch mirror and its packing materials from upstate New York to the top of Palomar Mountain in southern California. This project is designed for advanced middle school or high school students. It contains a suggested project that puts students in the role of problem-solvers, with students using the actual data points drawn from the 1947 primary sources. Students will learn how to work with a formula, and to manipulate the formula’s variables to achieve different outcomes.

Road to Doha explores critical environmental issues through addressing the driving question “How do we, as youth, impact climate change in our communities?”

Activities, resources, photos and videos from ISKME's two day professional development teacher training that explores Open Educational Resources (OER) and Maker-Teacher collaborations to facilitate innovation in the classroom. The Makers’ projects are points of inspiration for Teachers while they engage in design-thinking activities to create, remix, and share OER Projects with online collaborative tools.

In this video from Science City, meet a forensic scientist. She describes the steps to recover and analyze fingerprints to help solve crimes. She also discusses common attributes between art and science.

This unit emphasizes literacy skills for STEAM students, using the Planeterella Experiment to learn about aurorae. Guided by text-dependent questions, students will study and gather evidence from anchor and supplemental texts on the Planterella’s design, purpose and history, magnetic currents and their role in aurorae, the Van Allen Belt, the Lorenz Effect, and how global warming impacts aurorae. Students will perform experiments with magnetic currents and create a lab simulation of the aurora borealis using textual evidence and data from the anchor and supplemental texts. Students will present their findings and their experiments using the Tricaster TC40.

"Opening the World through Journaling: Integrating Art, Science, and Language Arts" teaches children to become keen observers of the natural world by drawing and writing about the plants and animals in situ. In a set of nested exercises, students use games to gain confidence in drawing and writing as a way to gather information. Later, they employ these skills to put together a field guide, make treasure maps, and to write short stories and poems.

An overview of the STEM 9 program at Pequea Valley High School in Lancaster County, PA. Most 9th grade learners take this course which teaches Algebra I math concepts via physics concepts and tech ed building.

Planning tools, descriptions, and required materials for running a STEAM day at your school

This is a template for lessons developed by the San Francisco Unified School District SLANT Cohort.

Just as the life experiences of a tree and its environmental conditions leave their marks as rings in the cross-section of a tree's core, so do the experiences of humans leave impressions, but often unseen. This project uses the tree as a metaphor to map life experience.

STEAM stands for "Science & Technology interpreted through Engineering & the Arts, all based in Mathematical elements," and aims to bring FUNctional literacy to students. Founder/teacher Georgette Yakman describes how her immigrant grandparents, brother with Asperger syndrome, and artistic stepfather led her to bring Arts into STEM.