Happy summer, filled with lots of good sunshine and time to explore! And during that prized time, perhaps your STEM preparation for the coming fall is ramping up – or will be soon.

If you taught STEM this past school year, you may be searching for ways to make your lessons even more interesting and effective. If you’ll be Teaching STEM for the first time this fall, you’re likely on the lookout for information, ideas, and know-how. In either case, where can you find information and a good refresher course on what STEM education involves and how it can be increasingly effective? Check out some of these ideas.

Review Your Purpose and Direction

I find that an occasional review of STEM basics refocuses me and helps me target important principles to incorporate into lessons.

• What Is STEM? I’ve listed this before, but it doesn’t get much better than this short, 3-minute whiteboard video explaining STEM education and its value for your classroom. Use it with your students, too, as well as with parents who want clarification. Send them the link via email or post the link on your school website.
• The Heat Loss Project: A STEM Exploration This STEM-in-action video from the Teaching Channel provides a terrific example of kids teaming up to engineer a solution for a real problem. Analyze this video to find principles you can apply for your STEM lessons. Notice how science, math, and technology are integrated.
• What Makes Something STEM? This post explains why STEM emerged as an educational priority and what STEM lessons include. It includes a list of “STEM basics” for lessons and programs.

Zero in on Engineering

Engineering is the heart of the STEM process, so I always review the engineering design process (EDP) and plan ways to make sure my students become familiar with it through regular use (not rote memorization).  A quick Internet search brings up several EDPs – all similar. The following process, EDP Description for Teachers, is one I use with middle schoolers. Notice that steps are iterative and need not occur in a particular order: If you would like a simplified copy for your students, click on The Engineering Design Process for Student Teams.  Feel free to copy and distribute to your teachers and kids.

Build Student Collaborative Skills

There always seems to be room for improvement in the teaming area. Preparing all kids to work together in teams successfully plays a critical role in STEM careers, as well as in other careers they may choose. You can download Student Teaming Tips for Your STEM Classroom if you want to brush up on some ideas in this area.

Refocus on the Role of PBL in Leading STEM

Looking at the four components of STEM leads to an obvious question: “Aren’t we teaching those subjects already?” Science, technology, and math have been a standard part of our curriculum for a century or more. So what gives?

Teaching STEM does not mean you’ll be teaching another subject. Simply put, you will be integrating these subjects and teaching them in a different way. – using a procedure described as project-based learning (PBL).  Like PBL, STEM is, first and foremost, a way of teaching that helps prepare students for learning and working in the real world where they will spend the rest of their lives.

Like PBL lessons, the path to STEM learning is open-ended. The students’ work is hands-on and collaborative, and decisions about solutions are student-generated. Students communicate to share ideas and redesign as needed. The most valuable thing you can offer them instructionally is the opportunity to imagine, develop their own ideas, test them to see if the work, and realize that they probably won’t work initially. (Kids learn more from what doesn’t work than from what does work.) They analyze their results and redesign.

A good STEM lesson includes these ideas characteristic of many PBL lessons:

1. Integrates and applies grade-level content in science and math
2. Presents a real and compelling open-ended problem
3. Allows for several acceptable solutions for the problem
4. Expects students to work in teams to solve the problem
5. Uses the engineering design process approach for solving problems
6. Includes technology that adds value and enhances learning
7. Supports a teaching process that is hands-on, and student-centered
8. Requires students to design and create a model or prototype of the solution
9. Provides time for kids to test their solutions, evaluate the results, and redesign if needed
10. Views failure as a positive step toward discovering and designing solutions.

Keep in mind – While the PBL method can be used to accomplish other learning outcomes, PBL is ideal for teaching STEM.

What do you want to accomplish as a STEM teacher next fall?

That’s the important question I try to answer as I mull over my STEM goals for the fall.  As you prepare to teach STEM, experience the sense of excitement that comes from knowing that what you are teaching matters – really matters – both to your students and to the world beyond your classroom.

About the Author:

Anne Jolly is a STEM consultant, MiddleWeb blogger, and online community organizer for the Center for Teaching Quality. She began her career as a middle school science teacher in Mobile County Schools in Alabama and is a former Alabama State Teacher of the Year. Anne has recently co-developed nationally recognized STEM curriculum with support from the National Science Foundation. She writes for a variety of publications. Her most recent book, STEM by Design, is published by Routledge Press. Find her regularly on Twitter @ajollygal, on her blog at MiddleWeb, and on her STEM by Design website.