STEM - Measurement Olympics

Juda has been part of the I^2 STEM summer institute at UW-Platteville the past 2 years; its goal is to have more STEM in schools which couples extremely well for my desire for large hands-on projects.  So I wanted to post about the Measurement Olympics I ran in my Intro to Engineering Class this semester and encourage other teachers to use it (motivation came from the institute and our school's Olympic theme this year).

Instead of homework I am trying to issue challenges this year.  I am pushing students to be persistent and solve difficult problems - really trying to focus on Habits of Mind.

I created a short youtube video about the events (so that my judges could know see first hand what the students were doing  - also here is a link to the materials)

It went great.  The students were divided into teams and estimate, calculated and worked hard on solving these problems - it ended with them presenting their results to panel of judges.  It went well and taught a lot of the real world skills we want in students.  Plus first prize was cool (see facebook post).....

Juda STEM Day - 2015-16 Robot Mazes

Wanted to share our STEM video, really proud of what we are doing at Juda!

Moving away from graded projects can be scary, but it worth it!

STEM, Teaching Math is more than just the M

I have been lucky to be part of a STEM grant at UW-Platteville the last couple of days (STEM - Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) - we, the participants, have had the opportunity to do some STEM projects, reflecting on practices and working with a great group of dedicated excited educators.

And the big thing for me - with 2 days out of 8 done is a new mantra to repeat - that STEM has M (math) in the STE part too.  Meaning that the STE part can have a huge impact on my students - a bigger impact in their ability to problem solve, their ability to be ready for the world versus just doing M.

So a question discussed was: are you a STEM teacher? The question followed the story of a 5th grade teacher using STEM to teach Math (and her need to teach parents that M is STE).  And my answer today is I am a math teacher who has large STEM projects.  I integrate STEM into math as I can but I rely on the projects I assign to do STEM things (and also the math practices).  For me the next step is continuously improving my lessons to include more STE - to teach more math concepts.

The practices we want are there in the STE part and any math room will always have M - so a message to myself : keep pushing the STE part.  Keep finding the projects, keep making the math learning happening through discovery.  Keep using a holistic approach and make each class just a little bit better (continuous improvement).

And

A day without math is like a day without sunshine.

is still true (love that phrase)!!  Now we know that STE portion is pure sunshine too.

How I started a big STEM project.

Here is a clip (made by one of my students) of me addressing a question on how I started our large Green Initiative STEM project. 

Just in the past week a group of students worked on mapping our school for energy saving opportunities beyond lighting.  Now they are working on gantt charts to define their deliverables.  It really is exciting to watch them take charge.