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Experience with STEM


ED 690 Mod 4 DB – Liam Breathnach

Experience with STEM

I am currently teaching in a private Catholic boys High school in Baltimore, and there what I would consider, quite a range of classes available in the science Department. Just in the last couple of years we have brought in a Forensics course and are using Project Lead The Way (PLTW) to teach Engineering. The forensics has proven to be wildly popular. The teacher has done a great job and has been very successful in having lots of hands on learning throughout the year. There are regular crime scenes created, fingerprinting labs and study of how glass breaks. I feel this has been the root of its success. The students get to play with bullet casings, experiment with how glass break and learn how blood droplets and smears can help give evidence. Also the teacher has had some guest speakers come and talk to the class about their various fields of expertise in Forensics.

The engineering and PLTW has also been eagerly greeted amongst the students body. Due to issues with resources places are limited and competition to get in to the classes has been fierce. This is the first year since the teachers actually went and were trained in the course but already you can see how the content is largely based on project based learning. The students have been competing in teams with a set of materials to complete tasks as best they can. They are of course encouraged to work together, design and experiment with their product in order to complete the task. There is also time for analyzing ideas and data before making improvements and retrying designs. All of the skills and the pedagogy are focused on getting students to learn through doing, and force them to develop the skills we have been reading about in our texts for most of our modules.

Since I arrived at the school there has been a focus amongst the staff on increasing both the number and quality of the labs we have during classes. I would thus far put the success in the general scientific subjects of Biology, Chemistry and Physics, as limited! I think there is a great deal which the instruction in these subjects could learn from the successes in Engineering and Forensics. While no hard data has been taken the anecdotal evidence is definitive and no surprise. The students like getting their hands dirty!

I have 3 classes this year of Freshman Biology and it has not been a stellar month to be honest. The main the Metric System and the Scientific Method. And frankly I think next year I need to teach them entirely differently. Both should be taught through activity. The scientific method as a concept is very simple, with people having gone through most of the steps unknowingly many times in the lives already. However trying to teach the phrases ad name of the variable always seems to catch people out. Having people conduct inquiries and experiments and retroactively teaching would be better I think. Likewise the Metric system is simple in theory, multiply or divide by ten’s, but the students struggle. Certainly this year’s freshman seem to have little idea of how to think something through, and how to use their prior knowledge outside the same repetitive task.

Entering this Grad Program I felt the need to improve primarily in the area of teaching through projects and inquiry and that is still my wish. I do feel that this school year I need to start with some small projects. I reflected recently that projects such as starting with a couple of bones and getting students to research the evolution of a species , or having students study a particular chromosome to find out it major phenotype influences could work. However I need more. I do feel though that starting small and learning from and building upon each year is the way to go. I have a tendency to go for the very big goals, and then only do it once. That tactic will not serve me in this endeavor this time.

Wish me luck

Thanks

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