Sharing Good Practice
Implement an effective STEAM
programme in your school
By Malachy McGrogan
• Teachers are still responsible for their
own subject area within the STEAM
curriculum but it is crucial that they
plan with other departments.
It is necessary to consider the
impact and value that creating a
STEAM curriculum would have for
your students. At Key Stage 3, it is
much easier to develop an exciting
curriculum without the shackles of the
exam boards.
The primary school environment also
works well for promoting a STEAM
curriculum, as the teacher is able to
manage the different subjects’ content
around a centralised theme.
In secondary, being able to develop
personalised schemes of work with
matching grading criteria allows us to
engage with a range of departments
to merge curriculums and add value to
the students’ learning.
T
he Arts have been incorporated
into the previously known
STEM philosophy to give us
STEAM: Science, Technology,
Engineering, Arts and Maths. With this
addition, it opens the concept of cross
curriculum planning to include the
more creative side of our students.
Traditionally, students have developed
skills and understanding for each
subject discreetly. What we often find,
however, is the inability to transfer
these developed skills to other
subjects.
Students may study formulae and
functions in Maths or Science, but when
they attempt to create a spreadsheet
in ICT, they become confused, as if
looking at this logic for the first time.
STEAM allows students to develop
skills across the curricula, building an
in-depth understanding of what they
are learning, and ultimately allowing
them to apply these skills in a range of
environments.
Having a variety of tools at your
disposal can enhance the learning
environment for students. Schools are
starting to invest in technologies such
as drones and 3D printers. In a STEAM
curriculum, this allows students to
progress further down the design
and prototyping path than previously
possible. They have an opportunity
to hold a physical prototype in their
hands, analyse its effectiveness and
plan realistic improvements.
There are a number of factors that
need to be taken into consideration
when beginning to implement a
STEAM curriculum.
• Careful planning is required. For this,
staff need to be able to allocate time
to collaborate. It is important that
staff have a chance to investigate
each other’s discreet curriculum and
see where there is opportunity for
overlap and joint planning.
• There is usually a range of topics
covered over the year by different
subjects. If planned correctly,
these could create marvelous
opportunities
for
a
STEAM
environment.
As teachers, we so often find ourselves
wrapped up in our own cocoon,
working within our departments,
settling into the comfortable, yet busy,
daily routine. We seldom grasp the
opportunities to explore the wealth
of activities taking place around the
school.
It becomes exciting, looking for ways
to collaborate with other departments.
An example unit of work could
be about Superstructures, where
students research existing structures
and develop their own design.
Through STEAM, we can enhance
this unit as the students learn about
architecture, geography, weather
and materials used in building.
They can go further and consider
how their structure could be ecofriendly, by incorporating solar panels
or vertical farms. They could also
consider dimensions and location.
When finished, they get to print their
computer generated 3D model on the
3D printer. Approaching the work with
real world scenarios allows students
to further consolidate their learning
and gives them the ability to apply
their new-found skills beyond the
classroom.
Class Time
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Sep - Oct 2016
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