Incorporating art into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) has been a natural consequence for many teachers; for others, a more deliberate process. Art has been intrinsic to the STEAM Lab in the Millstone Township (New Jersey) School District since its inception.

“From very start of our program, it’s been called STEAM. Good design incorporates art. Every good design has to be aesthetically appealing,” asserts STEAM Lab teacher Beth Topinka. “It makes the lab happier having the A in STEAM.”

At The Learning Community in Black Mountain, North Carolina, students collected, sorted, and measured leaves as they learned about patterns, graphing, proportions, and analyzing and interpreting data. Photo courtesy of Melissa Wilson.

For instance, one STEAM Lab project challenges Topinka’s fourth-grade students to design “mountainside mouse motels” after studying erosion and natural hazards. “Students did real angle measurements of the hillside, then designed a motel for a mouse,” she explains. After making risk assessment maps, students received differing material budgets based on their locations’ erosion risks. The assignment also called for students to come up with ways to promote their motels. Topinka monitored the weather forecast, and when rain was expected, had students install their motels, with a container inside to catch and measure water, on the hillside.

Topinka also has coordinated with colleagues to apply what students learn in her lab to other classes. After noting that “these little motels take a pounding,” the language arts teacher created a natural disaster reporting assignment. Topinka also works with the art teacher to make sure students develop the sketching skills they need.

“With my third graders, it was teaching them about sketching for scientific accuracy,” she recalls. The students reviewed the journals of the Lewis and Clark expedition as well as Notable Notebooks: Scientists and Their Writings by Jessica Fries-Gaither to “emphasize the importance of sketching by hand. If you snap a pic, you’re not looking, analyzing, observing” as closely, Topinka contends. “Those artistic sensibilities and detailed observational skills come more into play when sketching than by taking photos.”

When she adds art to a lesson, “kids who don’t feel like they’re science and math kids really like it. It feels a little bit more accessible,” explains Melissa Wilson, math and science teacher at The Learning Community, a K–8 experiential learning school in Black Mountain, North Carolina. When her seventh- and eighth-grade students were learning about scale, “the math curricula had a lot of taking an object and scaling it down. I thought, ‘Where do we use scale?’…I realized we could study da Vinci’s work as an artist and scientist and incorporate scale. Students looked at Vitruvian Man in art [class], then took those ratios and proportions and applied them to themselves. We used those ratios to do scatterplots in math. In science, we went outside and looked for ratios and proportions in leaves, sunflowers.”

Wilson’s fifth- and sixth-grade students studied Rube Goldberg comics before sketching and building their own devices. She says the experience was a lesson for her as well. “I was hoping they’d learn engineering, force and energy, a lot of math,” she recalls. “I learned, though, that I needed to put grit and resilience on the rubric. Because the machines had an end task, there were so many trials” as students learned why they shouldn’t manipulate multiple variables at one time.

She adds, “By starting with art, I hooked the artist students. It’s a way to get a higher level of engagement as well.

At San Francisco’s Town School for Boys, Lower School STEM teacher Jessica Boualavong meets before the school year starts with colleagues to discuss the main themes they will each cover during the school year. “We try to find one unit of collaboration in each grade…Our units are not STEAM in one classroom; they’re more STEAM-collaboration,” she says. When the fourth graders were studying ecosystems in STEM, they learned about the anatomy and life cycle of coral, knowing they would be using what they learned to make coral models in art class. In art class, they also learned about clay—from how pigments change when the clay is fired to techniques to add texture to a clay surface.

Boualavong and the art teachers assess the models separately. “On my side, it’s about scientific accuracy. Are they including accurate representations of different types of coral? Is the design appropriate to scale? In some activities, there is a labeling component,” she explains. She also aligned her assessments with the science and engineering practices of the Next Generation Science Standards. “It’s one way to vary my projects from year to year, and to keep skills consistent as they move through the grades.”

Timing is one of the “trickiest things,” she observes. “I’m moving at a pace based on student progress…and I’m trying to sync my schedule with the art department’s schedule. We have to decide if they’re learning the science first or the art first. I like to pop into the art studio when they’re starting a STEAM project to answer questions. The art teachers also visit the STEM lab.”

Boualavong appreciates the support of the art teachers as they also hold students accountable for developing skills. “Kids understand they’re building skills and those skills overlap in different areas.” she says.

Seth Hodges, a physical science teacher at Adna Middle/High School in Chehalis, Washington, began incorporating engineering into physical science lessons more than 10 years ago. Inspired by his own physics teacher years earlier, he began assigning his ninth-grade students to design Goldberg-type devices, which naturally led to discussions of perspective and scale.

“I tell them perspective is about looking at it in two dimensions and how to get it looking like three dimensions,” he explains. “I want students to learn how to evaluate things. I have juniors and seniors, who did the drawings themselves in ninth grade, evaluate [anonymously] the [ninth graders’] drawings for perspective and scale.”

Hodges likes to “surreptitiously slide” art into his lessons. “Kids have preconceived notions about what science class is like,” he says. He tries to disrupt those ideas by having students create skits about rules and sharing illustrations from Grey’s Anatomy as examples of “all the kinds of different things they can do here…Kids [come to appreciate] that there’s a lot more to my class than ‘just’ science.”

This year, Hodges started teaching a course on the physics of sound. “One of the main projects is kids have to build a musical instrument…We’re incorporating art and the visual process in designs of musical instrument process,” he explains, adding the instruments will not only have to produce sound, but they also will have to resemble something someone would want to play.

“I find that when we do incorporate artistic things into the classroom, I get a very good response from students. It’s not always art; sometimes things from [physical education] class. I’m always trying to find what else I can bring into my classroom to maybe reach the students,” Hodges concludes.

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2018 issue of NSTA Reports, the member newspaper of the National Science Teachers Association. Each month, NSTA members receive NSTA Reports, featuring news on science education, the association, and more. Not a member? Learn how NSTA can help you become the best science teacher you can be.

The mission of NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.

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While handling and examining objects from nature, such as sea shells, pinecones, rocks, and plant leaves, children may encounter patterns and experience properties of different materials. Without additional experiences with these objects children may not learn that structures grow in nature or develop an understanding of the complex relationships in nature—how a leaf grows from a stem or the relationship between plants and the earth they grow in.  A “science center,” where these kinds of objects are made available for children, may be a table, shelf, or just a basket. There may be a fish tank or worm box. These objects and living organisms are gateways to extended science explorations that can happen anywhere in an early childhood program—in the classroom, during “science time” or center time in any center, on the playground, or on a field trip. When children are no longer interested in the objects as science center objects, move them to other locations. Shells can become scoops for water in a tub and pine cones can make interesting impressions in play dough.

If you have a specific location for natural materials sure to leave room for any “finds” that children want to share.  A few days after new objects related to an exploration of a larger topic are placed on the science center, add tools for looking closely and for drawing to renew children’s interest in the objects and open opportunities for talking with children about what they see and think. Magnifiers, paper and crayons, a digital camera, and most importantly, people to talk with as they share their ideas, will extend initial observations into science explorations. Think about how the ideas they share can be explored more fully in additional situations, such as, in a sandbox or on a woodland trail, in the block center or in a book, or using paints or wire to make their ideas visible.

The July 2018 issue of Science and Children is focused on the topic of science centers. Read it now so the ideas related by authors can simmer this month and bring clarity to designing an effective and engaging science center that will support young children’s learning about scientific concepts.

Take a look at this science center and think about how young children might use it. Would you make any changes to the organization of materials? What support, that is not shown, would be helpful to make it possible for children to use and learn about the objects on the table? Do your children need a science center, and if so, what do they need in it?

PS–while you are reading the July 2018 issue of Science and Children, notice that journal Editor Linda Froschauer is saying good-bye: “My heart will be with Science and Children always. That’s what happens when you become involved in an initiative that impacts the lives of so many people.” Thank you, Linda, for making my work as The Early Years columnist more effective and more engaging.

For the STEAM Fair at Doane Academy in Burlington, New Jersey, upper-school students “complete projects in any field as long as they [relate] in some way to science concepts,” says Michael Russell, STEAM coordinator and mathematics and science department chair. Photo by Jack Newman, director of communications, Doane Academy.

Schools and teachers are transforming traditional science fairs into events incorporating science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) or STEAM (STEM plus Arts). At Lake Washington Girls Middle School in Seattle, Washington, for example, “we have transitioned [to] a Public Health STEAM Fair [in which seventh graders] identify a public health issue in our community, research the issue, develop a question and design a research procedure, then conduct statistical analysis to help them explain their data. Lastly, students present their research to [public health]…experts in the style of a conference,” says Christine Zarker Primomo, STEAM teacher.

“The curriculum in seventh-grade science is biology, so public health works great. But the bigger piece is that it [connects more] to citizen science. Public health is super broad and has a lot of connection to students’ lives,” Primomo observes. In addition, “[s]cience and social justice come together [for students] because their research can impact their community.”

She works closely with the math department because “they teach statistical analysis. [For their project,] students have to collect 30 data points…Students are more motivated to learn about standard deviation when it’s their own data,” she maintains. Local public health department staff provide data sets.

Students collect data via surveys and activities like collecting cigarette butts from nearby water bodies to study their effects on water, for a project exploring the effects of air quality on water quality, Primomo explains. For a project focusing on human sugar consumption, “students had test subjects and created a form requesting permission to collect data from them,” she recalls.
During the fair, students present a slideshow about their research to their families and judges from the public health community. Primomo grades students on their questions, procedures, data analysis, graphs, and presentations.

Doane Academy in Burlington, New Jersey, transitioned to a STEAM Fair because “we [decided] to celebrate student innovation and collaboration across all grade levels with a fair that permitted them to complete projects in any field as long as they related in some way to science concepts,” says Michael Russell, STEAM coordinator and mathematics and science department chair. “We wanted to motivate [students] to use the engineering design process more organically, [with the] idea that the science department isn’t the only anchor for that,” he adds.

Doane now holds a STEAM Fair because the science department found “students who thrive in science do elaborate, cohesive projects, while mid-tier students and students struggling in science find shortcuts and don’t do original work…We wanted to not just apply standards, but also have students do purposeful tinkering, driven by their passions and struggles,” Russell explains. “We made the fair a core part of our curriculum” because when students worked on projects at home, they tended to receive either “too much help from parents or none,” he contends.

Upper-school students can work with any teacher or community member to develop a product of their choice. One student wrote a book of science-related poetry that informed readers about mental health issues. Another wrote short stories about bug anatomy and behavior and illustrated them with photos. “A really cool thing is that our science kids haven’t lost the opportunity to do hard-science projects,” Russell emphasizes.

Introducing Engineering

Seventh- and eighth-grade science teacher Samantha Rudick of Northvale Public School in Northvale, New Jersey, was asked to redesign the seventh-grade science fair to include the engineering design process (EDP). “I [also] came up with [the idea of having] a theme,” she notes. Last year, students were told they were stranded on an island and had to create things to help them survive. This year, she told students they were living in a town with a polluted environment and had to use recycled or reusable materials to create games for a carnival that would raise funds for their town’s new recycling center.

“We did a unit on reusable versus nonrenewable materials…[Students] had to distinguish between [reusable and nonrenewable materials] to create their games,” she explains.

Students developed game prototypes and continued testing and improving them before the fair. They also created an interactive button apparatus that fair attendees could push to begin a presentation. “Some groups’ buttons were electric, [while others] used a sound-making device,” Rudick relates.

In addition, students had to make videos of their games and create a poster board showing every step of the EDP, illustrated with photos. “In their presentations, they had to explain their [EDP] without looking at their poster board,” she points out.

“The [school’s] administrators said this was the best science fair they’d ever seen,” Rudick reports.

Virtual Fairs

“We now participate in a Science/Engineering Fair, and everything is virtual,” says Laura Mackay, science coach and STEM liaison at Ed White Elementary E-STEM Magnet School in El Lago, Texas. “Students complete either a science fair investigation or engineer a design to solve a problem” and create a PowerPoint presentation, she explains.

Science fair participation had declined because “it wasn’t required, so more parents opted out. We decided to take the parents out of the process, and technology allowed this,” she relates.

Science fair boards were no longer needed, “which was really hard for some parents and teachers,” she reports. “The boards were flashy, but they didn’t emphasize the data.”

Using PowerPoint “meets the tech part of STEM,” Mackay contends, because students become highly proficient in it. “We’re modeling what the world is like now [and teaching] lifelong skills,” she adds.

“Science is still in there because students are analyzing data to see if their design will work,” Mackay points out. Past projects have explored solutions to problems like how to go fishing with minimal equipment and how to keep a soda cold using a wet towel in the freezer.

“Sometimes the finished project isn’t as amazing, but it’s all student-driven. It equaled the playing field on the judging part” because not all students have access to technology, “so we provide it to everyone,” she observes.

The judges appreciate that the judging is done virtually because “they don’t have to come here [to do it],” she reports. Students are only graded on participation because “[h]arsh grading killed the love of science fair [in the past],” she asserts.

“[Now we can] see what kids are really capable of doing,” instead of what parents do, Mackay concludes.

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2018 issue of NSTA Reports, the member newspaper of the National Science Teachers Association. Each month, NSTA members receive NSTA Reports, featuring news on science education, the association, and more. Not a member? Learn how NSTA can help you become the best science teacher you can be.

The mission of NSTA is to promote excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all.

Follow NSTA