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Standard 12: School/program provides high quality STEM courses and curriculum aligned to recognized standards and organized into interdisciplinary frameworks.
Standard 12: School/program provides high quality STEM courses and curriculum aligned to recognized standards and organized into interdisciplinary frameworks.
When planning STEAM lessons and PBLs, teachers use the Digital Literacy and Computer Science Standards as well as the Alabama Course of Study Standards. Digital Literacy and Computer Science Standards provide the framework for the study of technology from Kindergarten through the 12th grade. Teachers plan STEAM lessons and PBLs with their grade level to provide students with optimal learning experiences. Using the Digital Literacy and Computer Standards standards in these lessons ensures that we are helping students reach goals in the area of technology.
Teachers use Mystery Science to plan hands-on, engaging science lessons for students. Mystery Science features multi-media science units that promote discourse, uses visuals, and are aligned with Next Generation Science Standards and Common Core Standards. A series of short videos and prompts guide a class discussion, followed by an experiment that can be done as a class. Lessons cover a wide range of topics, including light and sound, biodiversity, engineering, and the water cycle. These units capitalize on the natural curiosity of students. Teachers worked to align the Mystery Science lessons to the Alabama Science Course of Study.
Drawing inferences regarding the author’s tone can be challenging. The fourth-grade students at Childersburg Elementary School took a more interactive and computational approach to determine the author’s tone or feelings about an event. We focused on reading standard RI.4.1: refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
The students began this activity by reading a story about the Holocaust. The students collaborated with their peers to determine the overall tone of the text by labeling each word as positive connotation or negative connotation. The students then entered the data onto a Google Sheet. The students used the data gathered to construct a basic system of numbers, letters, or symbols, to represent information as a cipher (computational thinking-abstraction). Next, the students formulated a bar graph to visually represent the data gathered. Finally, the students evaluated the information with their peers. Then each student wrote their inference about the author’s overall tone regarding the Holocaust. They supported their inference with data from the bar graph and evidence from the text. The following is an example of a student’s written inference.
Student Response:
“The overall tone of the article was negative. The negative percentage on my table was greater than the positive percentage. Some evidence from the article that supports this is destroyed, forced, starved to death, and Nazis.”
Talladega County School System has developed a coding progression for its schools to utilize in an effort to create a foundation and future trajectory of learning computational thinking skills and coding. This progression develops students’ understanding of computer science and coding languages while fostering grade-level appropriate pathways. The coding progression resource is scaffolded by grade bands and provides resources and potential activities for each tier. While we meet students where they are on their learning path of coding, we plan coding activities to push students to grow and move along the progression. This helps to ensure our students are ready for the next level of learning and eventually for jobs that involve coding.
The lessons that our teachers plan incorporate a variety of interdisciplinary activities that address curriculum standards for each grade level.
Strengths
Our teachers are skilled in creating high-quality learning experiences that align with the required standards.
Sustainability
They reevaluate completed PBLs in order to improve and expand the embedded STEAM skills.
Opportunities for Improvement
Upon reflection, we realized that although we have a coding progression in place, we could be more cognizant of that progression as we plan our lessons and activities. It’s important for teachers to become more diligent in monitoring progress on planned coding activities and evaluating success based on the coding progression.
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