Key points:
Elementary science lessons often follow a rigid, textbook-driven approach, with students passively following predetermined procedures and observing expected outcomes. This “cookbook recipe” teaching style not only stifles creativity, but it can also hinder critical thinking skill development.
Plus, it can leave students feeling disconnected from the scientific process, because they’re really just following instructions rather than actively exploring and discovering.
As a science teacher for grades 1-3, I wanted to create a completely different science lab experience for my young students. After looking around at the options on the edtech market, I discovered TinkRworks, a STEAM education platform that helps educators deliver engaging, hands-on learning experiences to students.
Here are seven reasons we added the platform to our science instruction for elementary students:
1. It connected to our NGSS work. We started with a pilot for second grade students and then expanded that pilot to include first graders. Second graders did the Pampered Plant project, which is a STEAM-based activity where youngsters create a customizable plant monitoring system. The younger students used Smart Lamp, which found them combining electronics, programming, and design to create a customizable lamp. Any time you introduce a project like this, you worry about how it will integrate with what you’re already doing, but these projects connected very well with our existing next-generation science standards (NGSS) work.
2. We tore up the recipe book. We were able to move away from the recipe-like science lab approach used by most elementary science lab teachers and develop a more dynamic, engaging, and even surprising experience for our young students. And while the curriculum was structured in a logical manner, it also includes engaging design elements and leaves plenty of room for students to ask questions, solve problems, and troubleshoot.
3. It gets students excited about learning. All students in grades 1-3 currently use TinkRworks for science labs. With Pampered Plants, for example, they created colors and symbols for the LEDs and coded symbols to indicate whether their plants were too wet or too dry. They had to find the parameters for those conditions and test out various scenarios. It was a lot of fun for them–they were really excited about it.
4. It helps students develop motor skills. Through the hands-on exercises, students also develop the motor skills needed to screw plates together, work with electronic components, and manipulate electrical plug and LED lighting. These are all skills they wouldn’t have been able to get in a hands-on way in the traditional classroom, where having 25 students using all of the tools and parts at once would have overwhelmed the teacher.
5. I only have two hands. At the age level I teach, pretty much everyone needs my attention at the same time, but I only have two hands. Thanks to our STEAM platform, students are more engaged, active, and ready to step in to help one another. Because of the way the boxes are set up and how the work is shown on PowerPoint, I can just direct traffic and let the students do the projects themselves.
6. Use only what you need. First graders use the platform twice a week, while the other students use it four times a week. The program is designed to be flexible and allows me “pick and pull” as much as I want to use. TinkRworks could be its own curriculum because it really does hit a lot of the benchmarks that we want it to hit. It includes everything we need for a project: the group work activities, the labs, supplies for teachers and students, and the reinforcement labs. There was very little that I had to get outside of the platform’s curriculum. It’s all-encompassing.
7. It gets students thinking about future career paths. My students can now explore an entire new realm of professions, some of which may not even exist yet. If they have the skill sets necessary to problem solve, communicate, improvise, and try, they’ll be able to do anything. It doesn’t matter what the career asks of them, they’ll be able to handle it.
This is my 20th year as a science teacher here, and based on my experience with this STEAM solution, my feeling is that every school should be offering science labs and using a platform like this to engage our youngest students in science, technology, engineering, and art–in addition to math.
These labs should align with the 21st century skills, computer science, coding, and everything else we know the future is going to hold for them. This not only helps break down barriers to learning complex subjects, but it also opens entirely new career prospects for our future workforce, and at a very young age.
