SPRINGDALE -- Challenging fifth-graders at Shaw Elementary School to think about how to stop a vehicle included discussions about the scientific concept of motion and required math to calculate acceleration, said Grace Gandy, a University of Arkansas at Fayetteville student nearing the end of a new certificate program for elementary education majors.
Giving pairs of first-grade students at George Elementary School the job of constructing buildings using paper, index cards, wooden craft sticks and drinking straws was part of a lesson that integrated science and engineering with a bit of math. The project kept 6- and 7-year-olds working for 90 minutes.
"Students are more prone to be engaged when they're not just sitting down," said Sarah Bart, another teaching intern in the graduate-level certificate program that trains pre-service elementary teachers to blend science, technology, engineering and math -- STEM -- into lessons.
The university began offering the certificates in fall 2012, said Mike Daugherty, professor of technology and engineering education. The elementary STEM graduate certificate program is in its third year, with 53 elementary education candidates.
UA-Fayetteville was an early adopter of the concept, Daugherty said.
"We just had been looking at some research that was telling us kids make decisions about whether they are good at science and math by third or fourth grade," Daugherty said.
But teacher training on integrating science and math often targets the high school level, he said.
"My conclusion was it's too late," he said. "Our primary focus is to develop a cadre of STEM experts who can go out and change the elementary school."
Gandy and Bart are among 21 students on track to graduate in May from the College of Education and Health Professions with masters of arts in teaching degrees and STEM graduate certificates, Daugherty said.
Elementary education majors take one or two courses for their certificates as undergraduates and the rest as part of earning their master's degrees, Daugherty said.
The teachers-in-training are learning to develop lessons that use problems and projects to integrate the four subjects. The projects often culminate in building devices or structures, with students required to defend their solutions in presentations, he said.
Some teaching students are nervous about whether they can handle the math and science, but they thrive because the instruction is delivered through solving problems, Daugherty said. A lab provides the university students with access to hand tools, such as drills and saws, as well as a laser cutter, 3-D printer and 3-D scanner for use on projects. The lab also serves as a model of what tools the teachers-in-training could seek for their future students.
Elementary observations
Few universities have integrated science, technology, engineering and math coursework into preparation programs for pre-service elementary school teachers, said Patty Born Selly, executive director for the National Center for STEM Elementary Education at St. Catherine University in Minnesota. The center was established in 2009, and St. Catherine University now requires all elementary education majors to earn STEM certificates.
Selly has noticed a growing awareness of the need to offer opportunities and courses that integrate the four subjects to elementary-age children, she said. Young children have a natural interest in science and engineering.
"They're constantly asking questions about the world and making observations about what they see," Selly said. "They talk about what they wonder. They talk about what might happen."
Teachers trained in intentionally making connections between math and science can capitalize on the wonder and interest of their students, Selly said.
"All of a sudden students realize math is everywhere," Selly said. "It's a part of what they're doing every day, not just in a workbook or at 1 o'clock every day."
Shaw Elementary has placed an emphasis on hands-on strategies to teach science and math. Teachers there attend training sessions to learn new strategies, fifth-grade teacher Abigail Farrell said. Teachers like Gandy, a university teaching intern in Farrell's class, will have that training at the beginning of their careers.
The integrated lessons follow a pattern that engages students in discussions about academic concepts, leads them to explore and test those concepts, and then to explain what they found, said Farrell.
"They're getting to develop the understanding themselves," Farrell said.
Marbles and cars
On Tuesday, Gandy began her lesson by reminding students what they previously learned about forces during an activity that involved building a roller coaster for marbles. Students repeated from memory what they learned about the laws of motion.
Then, Gandy introduced the concepts of acceleration and velocity. She gave students a scenario for the day's project. Students were part of a special operations team needed to stop a speeding car in which the brakes had stopped working. Their assignment was to design a tool to stop the car, represented by a small, battery-operated toy.
Students worked in groups of four. They each had to draw two designs, pick a design for their team, make a plan and have their plans approved before they could receive their materials and begin, a process commonly used in engineering, Gandy said.
Logan Essex, 10, a member of the All Stars team, remembered that the marbles gained speed when they went down the roller coasters, and he realized that stopping the car would require the opposite.
He and his team chose a star-shaped clip to serve as a ramp to stop the speeding car.
"It is going to lose speed," Logan said.
Design in first grade
Elizabeth Parr's first-grade class at George Elementary recently read a Little Critters story titled Just a Big Storm by Mercer Mayer. Her students are familiar with other stories in the Little Critters series.
Bart, who is interning in Parr's class, created a lesson that connected with the story. The 6- and 7-year-olds took out clipboards and worksheets that they completed about the steps of the engineering design process. They sat on the floor and talked with Bart about how the family had to move their belongings inside from outside because of the strong winds of the storm.
Bart assigned first-graders the taks of constructing a building in the Little Critters' town that could withstand a strong wind.
The projects aren't just crafts. They require students to follow the design process, which helps them develop problem-solving skills, Bart said. They also had to practice sharing and working as a team, skills that were challenging for some of the children.
Bart has learned that projects that integrate science are difficult in first grade because most of the first-graders' daily schedules are devoted to reading, writing and math, she said. They also still are learning to read and write.
In Parr's class, Noe Juarez, 7, and Anya Rodriguez, 6, chose foil, masking tape, glue, index cards, craft sticks and drinking straws to build the Little Critters' school. At first, they decorated a flat piece of foil to look like the front of a school.
They learned that their school had to stand up and that they needed a new plan.
Noe suggested gluing craft sticks to the bottom of the large flat school to make it stand up, but that didn't work. Anya thought they could fold and cut the large piece of foil to make four vertical walls. They taped index cards to the foil to make a roof. Green paper and craft sticks provided a decorative floor inside the school.
Bart tested each finished building with a leaf blower, and Parr recorded the number of seconds each building stood. Bart took the results and drew bars on a graph for the children to see.
A couple of structures stood for four or five seconds, but Noe and Anya's school blew down more quickly. Bart asked what the children could change to make their structures stronger.
"I would use strong things," Anya said.
NW News on 09/22/2014