HumaneMaths

What would you expect that your teaching would need to look like with students who have such a full, varied background in STEM? Students who have come from a flipped classroom set up would be immersed in tasks that are focused on building life skills in a playful manner. In order not to destroy the spirit with which they would come to me, I would need to have some best practices ready for my classes. These would be: · Flipped classes model, where students would be the in charge of their learning and classrooms can be used for discussions. · Questioning in the class, as when students come with initial work done, they would be probed to think deeper through questioning. · Play and investigation based projects. To give students a problem to be solved in a playful manner ensuring that there is space for making mistakes. · Collaboration of work to ensure that students learn to work together. How does this vision compare with teaching that you have seen when teachers...

Problem Statement  Most of our communication now days, the times of pandemic, is using technology. We text, email or use other means of communication (Capraro, Whitfield, Etchells, & Capraro, 2016). The challenge therefore is: How do we communicate using technology in a way that we convey authentic emotions through the medium? This is a life skill and relevant to everyone, whether in schools or work places. Especially in this time of online schools and online work, it is important that we communicate in a way that we convey our emotions through the tech tools that we use. This would help us to be less mechanized  and act as a self regulator. One tends to be less cautious during technology communication as the feedback loop that forms through non-verbal communication is broken. We provide many cues to others through our emotions that express through our facial expression and bodily movement (Whitbourne, 2014). Project Vision  Can we communicate online in a way that o...

One of my ex students, who I met after 15 years, took me out for street food and shared over dripping curry, “Having you as a math teacher made me go for math. For my family felt that girls do not need to do math but your attitude of impartial support to all of us, made me confident in my ability to do math.” I did not know that this is the impact I had on her. I made a girl move to math and be open to a future that involved math! Issues faced by students from areas underrepresented in STEM can be addressed through intentional program design (Lyon et al, 2012). Hence I were to do this as a process, I would start with a challenging problem and then tie it to the standards used to teach (Niehoff, 2018). This problem can be an area of connect for the females and students of colour. Everyone cares about their collective safety and futures (Niehoff, 2018). But the ones most vulnerable to it are women and students of colour. They will design and define a problem pertaining to violence in th...

Who would be involved in the PD program? All teachers would be a part of the PD, irrespective of the grade and the subject that they teach. But especially teachers of early years would be, as STEM needs to start right from childhood. It is in the early years that the play is most in the minds of the students and if nurtured by STEM, it stays on. Teachers of all subjects would be there in order to facilitate sessions on inter-disciplinary work. As the E of STEM, the EDP or Engineering Design Process, is the cycle that all need to be able to learn and implement. Who would facilitate and who would engage in the PD? Facilitation would be at 2 levels which are (a) experts in STEM and (b) practitioners of STEM. Experts in STEM can open new tracks for all of us with new windows of thoughts. Practitioners of STEM can show us how the new tracks can be implemented in the classroom in various ways. What professional development activities would occur? Several professional development activities ...

My perspective on STEM is changed. From looking at it from the perspective of technology and engineering and staying closed to it, I see it now as a design process and hence am intrigued as to how I can use it in my classes. The big ideas and how to use them? 1. The one idea that I was bowled over is EDP (Billar et. Al, 2014), Engineering Design Framework. I like it because not only it talks about an original solution, it moves in a cyclic way by creating a feedback loop that feeds into redefining the problem. I can use it in designing my lessons. There is no final design of a lesson plan that is a fits-all. The smart teacher would use EDP and keep re-looping the feedback back into the lesson plan design work. 2. STEM involves collaborative work and that brings forth the need for and hence the development of soft skills (Bell, 2010) . When students work together toward solving a common problem, they develop skills that will be required in their chosen careers in the future ...

  STEM Letter to Administration This is an ardent plea to the school administration to rethink the way preschool education is thought of in the school and focus on building a curriculum around STEM for preschool. Teaching STEM in the early years enables children to make connections between everyday life and the STEM disciplines. It also lays down the foundations for future success as the skills learned are transferable to other subjects ( Liftoff-Staff, 2019). Early exposure to STEM helps build critical thinking skills that are so needed for an adult life. Why Should We Do This? The question is not why we should do this. For, we are already doing this in our programs. Early childhood is based on STEM already. When a Science activity explores soil or a Maths activity explores shapes of numbers, students are in the exploratory mode leading to a new discovery that STEM has at its core (Boston Children’s Museum, n.d.). What we need to do is to turn it into a legitimate curriculum...

  I am most inspired and awed by STEM through story tim e (McClure, Guernsey, & Ashbrook, 2017), as I never thought that such an analogy could be drawn! There are two aspects of this that intrigued me, (1) using drama in story telling as an analogy to describe the kind of skills that STEM inspires and builds and (2) using stories that are inclusive of real life math and science issues and therefore can lead to learning the STEM based skills such as design thinking, collaboration, perseverance or small term memory. Students of this age group love stories so this could be the perfect space to introduce to them a situation that enables them to learn about STEM based skills early enough. Hence the activity I would like to have is a story telling session full of drama and context that involves walking to a secret place, counting steps and coming to math through the story. Definitely counting to a certain number. And using the context of walking to something small such as a fish pond...

  Growing Seeds with Kindergarteners What happens to seeds buried in the earth? I am taking an activity that explores this question with the kindergarten students (Malia, 2020). I am interested in this for I have never worked with kindergarten students and would like this exploratory activity that connects them to their real environment to begin with. The students will be growing seeds! I feel already excited. Standards Science Standards:  1.      Use observations to describe patterns of what plants and animals (including humans) need to survive (K-L-S1-1). Math Standards 1.      Describe measurable attributes of objects, such as length or weight. Describe several measurable attributes of a single object. ( CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.K.MD.A.1 ). 2.      Directly compare two objects with a measurable attribute in common, to see which object has "more of"/"less of" the attribute, and describe the differen...