Steam

I've been really interested in incorporating more STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and maths) into my programme and it has been really interesting to see the student agency bloom since this has begun.

While it is important to plan and be forecasting aead I am more likely to allow students to choose the path their learning takes. As long as I have planned to cover the New Zealand curriculum learning outcomes then it is easy to let the learners lead the way.

One such event was the OMG Tech space webinar that we participated in recently.  I wanted teh students to investigate the real world application of design. I came across the webinar sign up link on the NZ Teachers Facebook page and knew my students would love it. That it would expose my learners to new learning, new vocabulary and experts in an exciting field made it a must do.

The webinar lasted for an hour and the students were captivated, we then took part in a few challenges to make some rockets ourselves. I particularly liked that the experts had modelled a few different designs. My students could choose the one that they were most interested in and they were off.

Here is a link to a class blog post about the rockets.


Challenges: 
Getting the resources ahead of time
It was quite expensive to buy the resources
With so many different projects happening at once the behaviour management could have been a problem, luckily my class this year is lovely.
Reflecting and linking to other learning areas did take a fair bit of time - it was worth the effort because the students used oral and written language sills really well.

Using maths skills to figure out how high our big measuring stick is. 

Time for a break, mess = good learning.