Gina Ruocco

How to Design a Successful STEM Lesson

Jolly, A. (2016). How to design a successful stem lesson. Education Week Teacher.

Retrieved from: http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2016/09/23/how-to-design-a-successful-stem-lesson.html?qs=STEM

IL = Information Literacy and 21st Century Skills

CA - Curriculum

ET - Inquiry and Problem-based Learning

Article summary:

This article helps to explain what STEM lessons are and the components of a successful STEM lesson. According to Jolly, STEM lessons engage students in creating and engineering solutions to real-world challenges and problems. These lessons encourage critical thinking, cooperative group work while incorporating aspects of science, math and “creating technologies”. STEM lessons should foster inquiry because the tasks should be open-ended and allow for multiple solutions and innovative approaches. Jolly recommends seven considerations that teachers and co-teachers should keep in mind when planning a STEM unit or lesson:

1. Design your STEM lesson around a grade-level science or math topic that students have studied, or are studying.
2. Grasp the content and big ideas for the lesson.
3. Keep the challenge realistic.
4. Be familiar and comfortable with the Engineering Design Process (EDP).
5. Consider the criteria and constraints needed for your STEM lesson.
6. Have a good grasp of inquiry-based teaching and learning.
7. Know how to successfully engage students in purposeful teamwork.

Evaluation:

As a teacher who has no experience with STEM units, I found this article helpful. It offers realistic considerations on how to plan a STEM lesson or unit, and teacher-librarians can use these considerations to guide their collaborative endeavors with Science teachers. I like how the article stressed the idea of allowing students to develop and create multiple solutions to complex, real-world problems. This would surely foster critical thinking and problem-solving skills. It would also encourage conversation surrounding the rationale for these approaches and would give students a chance to respectfully discuss their opinions on how effective they believe the solutions would be. The school library can be the center for these STEM projects that require research and students to utilize their information literacy skills, so it is important that teacher librarians understand the components of an effective STEM unit.