Let's bring the results of the international STEAM projects into LIFE!

STEAM Upgrade II team

• Kerli Noormänd-Sinimeri

• Kerli Tart

• Marina Zhuravleva

• Mari-Liis Traksmann

• Triin Niit

Problem and aim:

The aim of this project is, on the one hand, to create a model of evaluation of digital competencies for STEAM learning, as well as to generate learning modules for the development of STEAM competencies among the kindergarten teachers.

Our team is dealing with the testing of one learning modules - Archimedes level.

By using this lever model, children will be able to understand basic concepts regarding the weight of objects.

The central problem of the project is to upgrade pre-and in-service teachers' digital skills with the online STEAM hands-on training module.

The role of our group in achieving the project objectives is to print the lever ourselves as most of us are kindergarten teachers, test it with the kids and analyze the materials that were developed.

Why this topic?

The main importance is to improve teachers’ digital skills.

The importance is to grow children’s natural curiosity in STEAM subjects.

• Creativity

• Hands on

• Develops growth mindset

• Teamwork

• Explaining their thinking

• Innovation

Activities implemented

• Team collaboration

• Project management

• 3D printing and testing

• Analyzing the results of first testing

• Creation of lesson plans

• Testing our ideas

• Final changes to lesson plans.

• Self-reflections of team members

Research base

The sources are divided mainly into three groups:

• Course and project-related information

• ICT usage among teachers in Estonia

• Physics teaching in kindergartens

Primarily we rely on the STEAM-UpGrade project data to acquire basic information about it.

Then we had youtube videos to enlarge our knowledge of the lever functionality and real-life examples. Furthermore, we studied the Ministry of Education site with the provided research findings on utilizing ICT in teaching environments in Estonia. Added to that, some of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) survey findings were studied.

The next part was more practically oriented with sharing gained experience of using ICT in kindergartens as well as available resources for providing lessons using Archimedes' lever. As some group members work in pre-school education, they could test the lever and receive first feedback from the children. Based on that we could summarise the initial perspectives of the project.

For the theoretical background about teaching physics for preschoolers, a monograph by Maia Santos, R.C.& Mackedanz, R. C. (2018) Physics Teaching for Children: A Bibliographic Review and Leif Marklund (2019) Swedish preschool teachers’ perceptions about digital play in a workplace-learning context, Early Years, DOI: 10.1080/09575146.2019.1658065 were taken into account.