After lots of research, I identified that an effective primary school STEM program should address the following points. A STEM program should:
- Use an explicit learning model (this could be the 5 E’s model as used by Primary Connections and EngQuest resources or the ‘Experience, Share, Process, Generalise, Apply’ model developed by Barker and Ansorge (2007));
- Students should have plenty of opportunity to fail – to facilitate opportunities to develop a growth mindset;
- Encourage curiosity;
- Always include a literacy aspect (include activities such as argumentation and analysis of scientific texts);
- Incorporate external partnerships – it provides real world contexts for activities and increases student engagement;
- Use open ended challenges (it results in more student ownership and therefore engagement in learning);
- Target under represented students (i.e. inspire more girls to be engineers); and
- Focus on a small number of skills – to maximise the likelihood of students transferring them between subject areas.
Note that this list does not specify activities (i.e. programming robots, sewing or 3D printing). They can be slotted in – depending on the interests of the teacher running a STEM program, the students interests, the priorities of the school principal and board and the resources you have access to.
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