The 2 stages of successful early STEM education revisited

I have been in education for 18 years and my strongest belief is that all children deserve a fresh start when they begin each school year. My classroom is a safe environment where students feel it’s acceptable to try, even if they’re not going to be successful the first time–and that certainly applies to STEM education.

Since the spring of 2014, I’ve worked with Stow-Munroe Falls City Schools in technology integration. The purpose of my position as an Academic Technology Specialist is to help teachers feel comfortable embedding new technology into their classrooms.

Working alongside teachers and helping their students with rapidly evolving technology is an incredible experience. Each year has been slightly different because students and teachers are, of course, different, and each year we move at the pace they need while building upon the skills from the previous year.

With the ever-changing best practices and new technology in education, I always try to update and adjust my own learning. I’m a lifelong learner and I believe my students should be as well.

That’s why our school gradually introduces STEM concepts, and coding in particular, to students as they progress through each grade level. We emphasize two learning stages to build fluid STEM integration from kindergarten to 4th grade:

Stage 1: Solving Problems Step-by-Step and Together

To broaden technology integration within STEM curriculum, we began to introduce computer science through the international movement, the ‘Hour of Code.’ One of my colleagues that taught STEM in my district introduced me to the program about four years ago. Since then, each year during the ‘Hour of Code’ I take the opportunity to introduce all grade levels to coding.

In our K-4 buildings, our goal is to integrate technology into the curriculum and enhance the lesson, activity or the critical thinking skills of the student, not just to use technology. Game-based learning programs like CodeMonkey, which focus on coding for kids, are usually their first experience with coding that introduces the problem-based learning mindset. We do the first couple levels together so I can model problem-solving questions I would ask myself. In this case I model out loud so they hear my thinking. The students then suggest methods to get a solution. If they say try eight steps, even though I know it’s 10 steps, I will try the eight steps and ask, “What should I do now?”

I also love having them act out the challenges on screen in their physical space. I often say, everybody stand up. I ask, “If we were the monkey in the game and needed the banana, how would we get there?” We physically do the steps and turns until we reach the solution together.

(Next page: The second stage of successful early STEM education)