Fall 2013 post #3

How can you incorporate the STEM concepts to a particular project or lesson plan in your classroom (or a classroom you’ve been in)?

As a math teacher I have plenty of opportunities to incorporate STEM concepts to projects. When thinking about the design process and how I could incorporate it into my classroom I think about the "3-acts" problems Dan Meyer highlights on his blog "dy/dan". In these lessons, Meyer presents students with a problem and asks them to solve it. The difference is, however, that he doesn't tell them which information is pertinent/impertinent for answering the question. Students are required to brainstorm, research, create models, and apply those models. A formal STEM design process could be used to provide students a framework for solving such problems. Below is an example of a problem.

Students are shown a video of a person standing on an escalator as it descends from one level to the next. Then they watch a video of this same person walking up the stairs adjacent to the escalator. Lastly, students watch a video of the same person standing in front of the escalator that is coming down towards him. He then starts walking up the escalator in the wrong direction.

Students will have to formulate a question, "how long will it take him to ascend the escalator going the wrong direction?". They will then have to brainstorm their methods, research by recording the times taken in the first two scenes... Eventually, students will have to create a model using concepts of functions and rates of change. Students will then present their work to the class.