Tag Archives: stem

Olivia Thomas was one of the winners of the National STEM Video Game Challenge (2015-16). Now studying computer science and games, interactive media, and mobile development at Boise State University, Olivia has already gained teaching experience of her own as she developed and taught a game design workshop for middle school girls.    When I was a senior in high school, I applied for and received a grant from the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT) to host a…

Opening minds to new ways of thinking about STEM for young children Researchers who study children often point out that teaching science and math in the early years is also a great way to support children’s literacy skills. But teachers and administrators lament that it is not so easy to integrate these subjects in day-to-day classrooms. It doesn’t help that the very concepts of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) can get short shrift in pre-K, kindergarten, and the early…

What do sippy cups have to do with STEM learning? Definitely more than you might think, says Elisabeth McClure, recent Cooney Center fellow and lead author of STEM Starts Early, a 2017 report produced by New America and the Cooney Center. Every day, early learners lay groundwork for more advanced science, technology, engineering, and math skills by engaging in impromptu experiments through trial-and-error interactions with the objects around them. Enter the sippy cup: a notoriously gravity-prone accessory that’s front and center in the daily life (and…

What if there was a better way to introduce math to young kids? For a parent, one of the first math concepts they teach their child is to count to 10. In this exercise, repetition is the name of the game: “Let’s count to 10!…Good! Now, let’s do it again!” While rote learning of the first 10 numbers is important, it is not sufficient for a child to grasp the deeper meaning behind these numbers, and why they are important to…

Last summer, I had the pleasure of interning with the team behind the National STEM Video Game Challenge. While working with the Cooney Center, I helped create and publish online content to spread the word about the STEM Challenge, and I also had the opportunity to work with students in game design workshops. The technology available to kids today extends far beyond what was available ten years ago when I was in middle school. It was incredible to watch these middle and high…

This post originally appeared on Common Sense Education and appears here with permission.   Watch a group of preschoolers working in a garden. It’s cute, right? But it turns out they’re learning more than you’d think. According to our new NSF-funded report, STEM Starts Early, co-published by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and New America, there’s growing evidence that very young children from all backgrounds — even children from birth to age 8 — learn important science, technology, engineering, and math…

On March 29, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, New America, and the Erikson Institute presented a webinar on integrating STEM into early childhood education to the STEM Ecosystems group at TIES, The Teaching Institute for Excellence in STEM. TIES focuses on STEM school design, STEM curriculum, and instructional support for schools. As our country’s leading STEM innovator, TIES brings STEM design services to districts, states, private philanthropies, corporations, federal agencies and many more. The STEM Ecosystems Initiative is made up of nearly 40 communities of…

A few years back, I was talking with a friend, a science specialist from the local elementary school, about the state of science education in the early grades.  Her assessment could be summed up in two words: not good. She explained that early elementary teachers were in a serious bind when it comes to science.  By and large, teachers for this age group have limited backgrounds in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and, because there is so much pressure to…

Watch a group of young children in a community garden. They’ll dig in the soil, find and play with earthworms and insects, plant seeds in patches of sunlight, and come back to watch them sprout, grow, and bear fruit. With a little help, these kids can be doing more than simply playing in the dirt. They can be learning the beginnings of environmental science and plant biology and practicing critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. Working alongside teachers trained in early STEM…

“Ugh! I hate coding!” cried out one of my seventh-grade students. “I don’t see why I have to move Elsa three spaces to meet Anna. It’s soooo boring!” “But with Twine you are coding,” I explained. “I guess,” she responded, unenthusiastically. The above conversation was an actual exchange I had with a student in my social studies class this past school year. She was referencing an Hour of Code activity she was assigned to complete for another class. In it,…