February 23, 2024
Let’s face it, many students have a hard time grasping science-based lessons and activities. This can lead to students often feeling discouraged by their lack of understanding. However, the power of a well-organized STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) curriculum can help students better understand the lesson and change their discouragement into enthusiasm.
Including a strong STEAM-focused curriculum allows students to express their individuality in projects all while equipping them with emerging technologies. It empowers them with kinesthetic learning that ignites the imagination and sparks creativity. This is all while employing students with critical thinking skills.
We often tie our STEAM projects with real-world problems such as the U.N. Sustainability Goals and engineering tools like Minecraft, or coding. By doing this we teach our students how to better understand elaborate concepts and solve complex tasks but still have fun.
Whether your school is in person, collaborating with other schools, or even fully remote, a well-thought-out STEAM curriculum can provide a structure that allows for flexibility and innovation. It brings new ideas to your school, through fun kid-tested experiential learning.
We’re proud to say that we were featured to share our STEAM teaching in action at the WE Service-Learning webinar! This was a great opportunity to discuss our STEAM-focused and technology-driven curriculum.
For the webinar, we presented our Microsoft’s Tech for Good Challenge project. In this assignment, students studied the local salmon population and demonstrated their newfound knowledge in app creation, PowerPoint presentations, and digital illustrations.
For this presentation, we shared our project’s goal, what Microsoft tools were used, and the final outcome of the project. We’re excited that by sharing our class activities and teaching methodologies, we can help inspire other academic professionals.
In addition to the WE webinar, our executive director and a group of students presented at the annual NCCE Conference. For this event, Dr. Michelle Zimmerman and four students (Rayna, Chloe, Elizabeth, and Alexandra) demonstrated the use of Prezi through a beautiful video presentation. It served as a backdrop, accompanying a choreographed dance routine organized and performed by our students for our annual dance program.
The purpose of this presentation was to illustrate how technologies and software like Prezi can help students apply what they’ve learned in class while also being a creative outlet that supports social-emotional learning.
“This experience has been amazing for all four of us! We were able to explore new tools to create fun backdrops for our dance performance, and were able to integrate different types of media into our designs. We have strengthened our skills in creativity, problem solving, and critical thinking,” said the students that joined our administrator. “We are so glad that we got this opportunity to work with the Prezi software, and having our digital art showcased in the whole school dance program.”
One group of fourth and fifth graders advantageously used technology to create an emotionally charged dance number to the song Mad World by Gary Jules. Others harnessed the technology to a significant effect by creating original dance routines. In the end, the students were able to express their creativity about the last few years both in the presentation and in their performance.
At Renton Prep, our award-winning STEAM-focused curriculum allows our students to learn new subjects through creative digital methods that stimulate their eager minds and facilitates the learning process.
If you are interested in more information about our teaching methods at Renton Prep and how it can enhance your child’s learning, or if you have any other questions, please contact us. We’d love to talk!
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