Preparing STEAM Education Lessons
Author: Manuel R. CortezRodas
Ideas, Themes, and Concepts
What do you want to present to your students in this lesson? This is the primary question that needs to be addressed as you prepare a STEAM education lesson. The difficulty of the task is the wide range and availability of ideas, themes, and concepts that are out there, and are worth the time to be introduced to students. This is why it is so important that the first step in developing a STEAM education lesson be choosing a primary idea, theme, or concept that we, as educators, can prepare and present to our students for their learning.
Language
Once you have chosen a central primary idea, theme or concept, comes the task of developing the necessary language with which to communicate the lesson to the students. This task begins with the introduction of the necessary vocabulary.
Introducing the necessary vocabulary creates a base language which we need to be able to communicate the STEAM Education Lesson. Creating a language based on necessary vocabulary allows educators and learners to communicate and exchange ideas, themes, and concepts with success.
Connections
A STEAM Education Lesson should be connected to present. We should present students with current connections, to the lesson being presented, that are of importance today. If a lesson is not connected to the present, the it becomes at danger, of falling outside of time, that students experience on a constant day to day basis. Students are connected to present events of a diverse nature through more that just the strands of technology and arts. The science, engineering, and mathematics, of STEAM must also become part of the connections that students be presented with.
Applications
What are the applications for the STEAM Education Lesson that we are preparing to present? The applications for STEAM Education should be founded on the five stands of STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics. How is each strand of STEAM applied to the lesson, and how does that application to each strand connect to the others? Applications to our lessons should inspire our imagination. Students should be able to apply STEAM education lessons in the present for what is important.
Required/Applied Knowledge
Knowledge should be required of the learners and applied by the educators. Each student has a unique level of the required knowledge of the lesson, as well as a unique level of applied knowledge of the lesson, that will vary from learner to learner, and classroom to classroom. It is for this reason that the educator measure the level of both required and applied knowledge that learners have.
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