Key points:
In my fall 3rd-year “STEM in Early Childhood” class, I noticed a common trend: The pre-service teachers, who were all women, shared a stereotypical belief that they were not math or science people, and therefore not equipped to teach STEAM. I typically assign a hefty 20-page final project in my STEM course, but I decided to take a more playful and hands-on approach for this group of students. My motivation was simple: I wanted to help the class build confidence in teaching STEAM concepts.
Fortunately, a year prior, one of my 4th-year senior capstone students had prior experience with high school robotics and was interested in finding a screen-free way to introduce robotics to Dean College’s Children’s Center. She discovered the KIBO robot, and for her capstone project wrote a grant application for the Dean College Innovation Grant. She won the grant, which allowed the Dean Children’s Center to buy two KIBO kits and do an independent study project focused on implementing the hands-on, screen-free robot with four- and five-year-old children at Dean College’s Children’s Center. This inspired me to incorporate KIBO into my STEM course for pre-service teachers.
Embracing change with a hands-on approach to STEAM learning
With my usual 20-page final project firmly in the rearview mirror, I instead instructed my pre-service teacher students to play and explore. When the class expressed hesitation, I challenged them by saying, “If three-year-olds can do it, you’re going to do it, too.” I recognized that their intimidation did not come from the technology itself, but rather from a lack of confidence. By implementing this hands-on approach, I hoped that the students would not only deepen their own STEAM understanding, but also gain the confidence and inspiration to effectively teach these critical subjects to their future students.
To build up the students’ confidence and skills, I started by having them program and design the KIBO robots on their own. As the lessons progressed, we explored various uses of KIBO in the classroom. In one lesson, we transformed KIBO into a snowplow by designing a plow for the front of the robot and programming it to clear snow (or cotton balls). In another lesson, we used KIBO as a bowling ball to strategically knock down plastic bowling pins. We would conclude each class with an observation/ feedback session, allowing the pre-service teachers to share their experiences and learn from each other.
Thanks to the Commonwealth Cares for Children (C3) Grant from the Massachusetts teachers early childhood program, the center was able to buy the KIBO curriculum and various attachments for deeper exploration as well. I had the students look through the written curriculum with young students in mind and find a plan that they thought would work best for the children. The goal of this lesson was not perfection, but rather for my students to learn what works and what doesn’t through the lens of young minds, and how to adapt their teaching approach to a given curriculum. I told the class, “It doesn’t have to be completely successful. Let’s just give it a try and see what happens. We will learn a lot from this!”
Building skills and confidence
As I had hoped, the class learned more efficiently and enthusiastically about STEAM topics through this hands-on learning approach than they would have from my standard PowerPoint presentations and lectures. Through their work with KIBO, the pre-service teachers discovered they already had more STEAM skills than they had initially realized. Designing their own lessons with KIBO included integrating robotics into a specific subject matter, incorporating arts and crafts, and developing sequences with KIBO’s programmable wooden building blocks, and helped them exceed their own expectations by engaging with coding, robotics, and other STEAM concepts they had found intimidating at the start of the semester.
For this class, we focused on introducing robotics to four- and five-year-old children. However, I believe even younger children are capable of engaging with these STEAM concepts. Research has shown that young children’s brains are primed for this kind of hands-on, exploratory learning. This is a key consideration as I continue refining my courses for future educators. After a semester where I threw out the syllabus, I was left with an inspiring question: How can I make my future courses more practical and still keep the academic writing and the academic requirements intact?
Looking towards a play-filled future
For the upcoming school year, I’m incorporating ScratchJr into the curriculum to add additional programming skills and a bit of age-appropriate screen time for five-year-olds. I also plan on adding an app called Kaymbu that helps educators take observations, videos, and pictures, which connects students to developmental assessment information, and facilitates communication between home and school. I’m excited to see how these tools enhance the learning process.
My parting advice for colleagues who are teaching the next generation of teachers: Let them play! Let them have a good time. Once they find some enjoyment in what they’re doing, then you can layer on all the pedagogy they need to understand. If you free your pre-service teachers to play, they’re apt to do the same with their students. When my class, who didn’t see themselves as STEAM teachers, had the freedom to tinker without a fear of failure, they became far more eager (and better equipped) to teach those concepts in their own future classrooms. By starting with hands-on learning and building confidence first, I believe we can transform how the next generation of educators approaches teaching STEAM–and how future generations of students will learn these concepts as well.
