The teachers in our magnet program for the arts and academic excellence recognized a need to
explicitly foster creative thinking skills within our content. We determined that the process of incorporating visual
arts to learn in a STEAM approach would be impactful. We implemented a goal to foster creativity by requiring
students to combine or synthesize existing ideas, images, or expertise in original ways and thinking, reacting, and
working in an imaginative way characterized by a high degree of innovation, divergent thinking, and risk taking.
Analyzing and interpreting Leonardo da Vinci’s work has led the students to understand math and science in a
more visual manner and has opened their eyes to the benefits of STEAM. Students have used sketch notebooks to
demonstrate and conceptualize their learning of STEAM with geometry, formulas, motion, and to visually
represent models that can be created to combine understandings. Additionally, students have engaged in
independent research projects in which they’ve chosen a problem or topic to explore further and then created a
sketch notebook page to work through their solutions, often ending in a product created and reaching to others
through technology.
Math Formulas
5th grade students learned about a variety of geometric math formulas including area, perimeter, volume, and
surface area. At the end of the unit, students created a sketchnote to reflect on their learning from throughout the
unit. Students purposefully organized their sketchnotes in a way that made sense and helped identify the
relationships amongst their learning from throughout the unit.
In the sketchnote to the left, you will see specific
math vocabulary (area, perimeter, circumference,
dilation, rotation, etc.) which this student learned
during the unit.
This student also connected the area of triangles
and trapezoids along with the relationship between
circles and cylinders which was above grade level
content the student learned. This student also
connected a variety of math symbols and equations
into their sketchnote.
STEAMed Magazine
30
October 2016 Edition