Adapt!
Integrating core curricula within my art curriculum has been a longtime self-directed practice. I began in order to
maintain relevance and indispensability as a specialist among my classroom teacher colleagues, administration and
parents. It has become second nature to me to notice and look for connections between art and math, science,
language arts and social studies. Because art is such a viable conduit for integration, it is easy to keep up with everevolving education and school initiatives. The versatile and all-encompassing reaches of art and art history
perfectly lend themselves to reflect and convey core concepts.
So when STEAM started to emerge as the replacement buzzword for
STEM, I felt covered. To help increase student understanding, I decided to
explore the possibility of adapting STEAM concepts to fit my very young
(PK-grade 2) students, when most resources were geared toward upper
grades. I went back to my curriculum, NGSS in hand, highlighted the
overlaps and fortified my lessons, finding and gathering motivation to
develop extensions or brand new paths bridging science and art. Next, I
looked to develop a logical approach to the STEAM areas I felt best
related to my students. I set about acquiring materials & resources,
implementing, extending and collaborating to bring my STEAMlab to life.
I launched a STEAM-intensive enrichment class to pilot lessons and ideas
within a small group. This article is a brief synopsis of my approach.
Acquire!
In keeping with my practice of citing core standards and benchmarks within my lesson plans, I began by sorting
those lessons specifically personifying science and math standards, delineating STEAM areas of chemistry,
biology, engineering, math & technology. Next, I thought about the most meaningful approach to getting my
students involved in STEM-based learning. As consistency and timing is such a huge part of early learning, I
looked to our school year progress reporting structure and decided to devote one area of STEM per trimester.
The introductory discipline was easy: biology! Most of the lessons I sorted into this area were animal, habitat and
nature-based-a perfect and popular topic for elementary learners and a great chance to develop a mini nature lab as
an instant enthusiasm-builder resource within my classroom. For trimester 2, I chose the maker space idea as a
platform by which I could incorporate engineering, physics and collaboration with a design-build model to really
explore the commonalities between the design and science inquiry processes as foundational tool for student
learning. Finally, I chose technology as the third component in which I could integrate my somewhat limited
classroom technology to complete the STEAM learning circle and jumpstart collaborations between art ed and tech
ed. Another common denominator among children, technology could extend and inspire continued student learning
across disciplines in and out of the classroom. So it began!
STEAMed Magazine
7
October 2016 Edition