Using Summer STEM Connections to Hook Students
This past week, I was traveling and found myself watching the conveyors loading luggage onto and off of the plane. It immediately made me think of both the recently published CTE Workcell STEM Lab Unit all about conveyor systems and how students might be seeing these kinds of connections throughout their summer. These real-world STEM moments are something you can use to help start your school year and help students make those valuable connections.
Help Students Make the Connection
Students who are new to STEM or robotics classes may not have the background knowledge to make these immediate connections. You can share some examples in order to help them make that leap.
Gear Trains
Many students will have spent their summers out in a playground or park riding bicycles. Bikes use gears in order to increase the efficiency of the pedaling, effectively moving the bike faster, using a gear train. If your students have competed in a VEX Robotics Competition or completed the IQ Tug of War STEM Lab Unit, they will have experience in using gear trains to create more torque or more speed.
Game Strategy
While some students may spend their summers outdoors, many people (including myself!) enjoy curling up and playing a new video game. Each time students plan, iterate, and optimize their game strategy or reconfigure the controls on their controller, they are experiencing and experimenting with STEM and CS related concepts. Additionally, video games are an engaging way to connect coding challenges like the Coral Reef Cleanup in VEXcode VR to those real-world STEM experiences from students.
Fluid Power
Carnivals or amusement parks are full of examples of fluid power (pneumatics and hydraulics). When you look at the swings, they use this fluid power to raise the swings from the ground into the air. Students may be familiar with these concepts of fluid power from completing the CTE Workcell Unit on pneumatic systems.
Sharing Connections
Once students each have an idea of a real world STEM example they have engaged with, you can have them share those connections in different ways.
- Bulletin board: Create a visual representation of these real-world STEM connections in your classroom. Students can make suggestions throughout the year of what to add to it as they make more connections. You can have students create journal pages to describe what they saw or did, or bring in photographs from summer experiences. Throughout the year, you can add to the bulletin board from field trip experiences, or weekend events!
- Student-made models: Students who have familiarity with their VEX Kits could use them to create a model of the real-world STEM connection they made. This could be a great way for you to revisit content from previous years or semesters. Add these models to your bulletin board by taking pictures and having students write a brief description of what they built and why. You could share these with your school or classroom community by interviewing students on camera and sharing their videos.
- Personal documentation: Real-world STEM connections can be a way to have students practice the documentation that they will be using in your class. Creating a section in their engineering notebook for documenting these connections throughout the year can help remind students of the STEM that is all around them. Consider challenging students to find and document three examples of each new STEM concept you introduce throughout the year.
What real-world STEM connections have you seen recently? How are you planning on setting the scene for your students as they come back to school? I’d love to hear all about it in the PD+ Community or we can talk through how to help get your school year started in a 1-on-1 Session.