Imagine a nationwide team of STEM education experts creating a GPS system of sorts for educators who want to chart a course toward an integrated STEM approach—one that’s aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards, the Common Core State Standards, and the Framework for 21^st Century Learning.

That’s exactly how NSTA’s STEM Road Map Curriculum Series came into being. STEM educators from across the United States responded to a growing need for K-12 classrooms to offer students real-world learning experiences, ones that are delivered through authentic problem-solving and pedagogy and grounded in integrated STEM.

The developers of this work embed authentic assessment and differentiation through each module, and they view the curriculum as a resource that serves the needs of whole districts, individual schools, or classroom teachers focused on implementing an integrated STEM approach in their own unique construct.

Three new books have been added to the STEM Road Map Curriculum Series, each targeting a different level of secondary school:

In Packaging Design, sixth-grade students can explore how marketing, packaging, and communications connect. Students have the opportunity to learn how to repurpose a product or market it to new customers, convince customers to buy their product by honing their persuasive writing and speaking skills, and develop their content knowledge while investigating the complexities of marketing.

To purchase a print copy, click here.
An e-book version of this book is also available for purchase.
Enjoy a sample chapter by clicking here.

Improving Bridge Design  puts eighth grade students in charge of strengthening the nation’s infrastructure by designing longer lasting bridges. Students examine both the nation’s as well as their own community’s current infrastructure, focusing on bridges; create models of bridges using scale factor; research the types of rocks used in bridge design; investigate building costs and more sustainable design; and debate the merits of a federally established program (similar the post-World War II Works Progress Administration) to improve the country’s public infrastructure.

Click here to purchase a print copy of this book.
An e-book version is also available. 
Enjoy a sample chapter of this book.

After exploring the content in Car Crashes, 12th grade students will understand the physical forces, industry challenges, role of governmental safety standards, and individual rights. Lessons take students through the roles of  forces, speed, velocity, momentum, and impact in auto safety; reverse-engineer car crash scenarios to understand why accidents happen; the background and effect of government regulations; and the many aspects of the car-safety industry.

To purchase a print copy, click here.
An e-book version is also available.
Click here to enjoy a sample chapter from this book.

The trend toward an integrated STEM focus across districts, schools, and classrooms prompted NSTA to create this high-quality, research-based K-12 curriculum series. Find the ones that are just right for you.

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This week in education news, new Forever GI Bill law allots a fifth year of education benefits for eligible students pursuing degrees in the STEM fields; President Trump signs NSF STEM Education Research Bill; researchers argue that education apps often don’t align with what we know about the science of learning and memory; Boston Museum of Science president and director to resign at the end of January; a look back at 2018’s seven biggest federal K-12 policy stories; and a new study finds that states need to focus more on teacher practice when implementing the Next Generation Science Standards.

Vets Interested in STEM Degrees Could Get More GI Bill Money in 2019

Some college degrees in science, technology, engineering and math fields take longer than four years to complete, which is why the new Forever GI Bill authorizes an additional school year of GI Bill funds on a first-come, first-serve basis. Scholarships of up to $30,000 will be available for eligible GI Bill users starting in August 2019. Only veterans or surviving family members of deceased service members are eligible for this scholarship — not dependents using transferred benefits. Read the article featured in Military Times.

The Teacher Strikes and Protests Planned for 2019

While 2018 was a pivotal year for teacher activism, with large-scale strikes in six states and more protests around the country, there has been some question as to whether momentum would continue into the New Year. So far, though, we know at least a few places where labor actions are likely to happen. Read the article featured in Education Week.

President Trump Signs NSF STEM Education Research Bill

President Trump on Dec. 31 signed into law H.R. 5509, the “Innovations in Mentoring, Training, and Apprenticeships Act,” that would direct the National Science Foundation to provide grants for research about STEM education approaches and STEM-related workforce issues. Read the article featured on Meritalk.com.

Being Wrong Has Made Me a Better Teacher

When I was a brand new teacher, my advisor from Bank Street College would observe me. Afterward, when I was expecting criticism, she would always point out a few positive moments that I usually hadn’t noticed because I was so fixated on what needed work. Her positive observations helped me see a sliver of success, so I could build in that direction. I easily identified what had not gone well, and we also problem-solved those issues together, but her encouraging observations helped keep me from beating myself up when I wasn’t meeting my own expectations. Read the article featured in Education Week.

Scientist to App Developers: Tap Learning Science to Be More Effective

Education apps are pitched to help students’ learning, but often don’t align with what we know about the science of learning and memory, researchers argue. In a new commentary in Nature’s Science of Learning journal, cognitive psychologists from the Swiss Distance Learning University, the University of Bonn in Germany, and the University of Bern in Switzerland laid out four key findings on learning and memory that could make education apps more effective. Read the article featured in Education Week.

Ioannis Miaoulis, Longtime Museum of Science President and Director, to Step Down in January

Ioannis N. Miaoulis, the president and director of the Museum of Science, Boston, plans to leave after 16 years, the institution announced. Miaoulis, a former dean of the Tufts University School of Engineering and longtime advocate of science education, oversaw the largest capital campaign in the museum’s 188-year history and the launch of record-breaking exhibits inspired by the Star Wars movie franchise and the Pixar movie studio. Read the article featured in the Boston Globe.

How School Policy Changed in 2018: The Year’s Seven Biggest Federal Storylines, From Unforgettable Student Advocacy to an Already Forgotten White House Proposal

The second year of the Trump presidency has been one for the history books, particularly in the realm of K-12 education. Some moments this year were unforgettable, either for their sheer emotional power and size, like the waves of student-led gun control and school safety advocacy, or for their potential to upend the way schools operate, like the Supreme Court’s Janus decision. Read the article featured in The 74.

Meeting New Science Standards Requires Greater Emphasis on Teacher Practice

As states implement the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), a new study finds that simply focusing on building teachers’ content knowledge in science isn’t sufficient to help students reach higher expectations. “These science learning goals pose a challenge for educators,” the authors write. “Typical K-12 science teaching practice does not come close to matching the kind of teaching needed to support such learning.” Read the brief featured in Education DIVE.

Stay tuned for next week’s top education news stories.

The Communication, Legislative & Public Affairs (CLPA) team strives to keep NSTA members, teachers, science education leaders, and the general public informed about NSTA programs, products, and services and key science education issues and legislation. In the association’s role as the national voice for science education, its CLPA team actively promotes NSTA’s positions on science education issues and communicates key NSTA messages to essential audiences.

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

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At the New York Botanical Gardens, students and parents play Biome Builder, a game from New York City–based learning games company Killer Snails. Photo courtesy of Killer Snails

Jamie Easley, eighth-grade science teacher at Eleanor Roosevelt Middle School in Dubuque, Iowa, says she created Science Ball—a baseball-like game—“to make test review interesting [for students]…It’s important to find every way possible to increase engagement and interest in the material we’re teaching, especially if it’s an unusual way to do it,” she contends.

Easley labels “bases” in her classroom, and divides students into two teams. One student from each team “answers [short-answer or multiple-choice] questions simultaneously on small whiteboards, then they reveal [their answers at the same time].” Correct answers allow players to advance to a base; incorrect ones result in an out. Easley selects questions for each pair, and pairs students of similar levels so she can choose appropriate questions—a must for special-needs students.

To inform students about science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers, Donna Muller, former K–8 technology teacher at Atonement Lutheran School in Metairie, Louisiana, says she turned The Game of Life® into a STEM careers game by creating her own “career cards, basing them on Career and Technical Education (secondary certificate) careers versus [the] college-bound careers. It makes it meaningful and shows career pathways.”

Muller has used other popular games in her classroom, many of which have free digital versions online: Kahoot!® for vocabulary; Heads Up to teach about scientific processes like the water cycle; Pictionary and Win, Lose, or Draw because “they allow students to draw [things like] the parts of a cell. [Games] are a way to reach [students with] different learning styles.”

When students excel at the games but don’t perform well on tests, “the games can show me why the tests aren’t working…If you set the game up right, it should test content knowledge,” Muller explains. However, “games should not be the ‘end-all,’ they should help students get comfortable with the material, but students also need to do projects, hands-on [learning].

“You are getting cross-curricular with games, which helps you meet the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS),” asserts Muller. In addition, “you are actually teaching those [21st-century soft skills], such as learning to work together and it’s okay to not have the right answer; just keep trying…Students need to [be able to] make mistakes without it counting [against their grade].”

“Games [equalize] my class, even when some students have prior knowledge, and give everyone an activity to talk about,” says Cynthia Hopkins, seventh- and eighth-grade science teacher at Kaffie Middle School in Corpus Christi, Texas. She has students play games related to concepts before teaching the concepts. “I use a game called Suspend to teach [about] unbalanced and balanced forces,” she notes. Suspend involves hanging notched wire pieces on a tabletop stand. Adding pieces shifts the balance, and players try to add all their game pieces without making the structure fall.

“[Suspend] is the first thing I do in my Forces and Motion unit. I give no initial explanation. The debrief is the important part: Why is [your structure] balanced or unbalanced?,” Hopkins relates.

To create her own game cards based on state test questions, Hopkins uses the free resources on Problem-Attic, one of many resources that she and a colleague presented during their Game On: Gaming With a Purpose session at the Science Teachers Association of Texas’s 2018 Conference for the Advancement of Science Teaching.

Playing games with her students helps Hopkins “get to know them and allows me to check in with them during the year…I’m willing to look foolish,” she admits, “because sometimes it takes that to reach some of my students.”

In her games, Allyson Macdonald, a professor of educational sciences at the University of Iceland in Reykjavík, Iceland, requires student preparation. For Sustainability Scrabble, each student “had to make five tiles…The tiles all had to be related to recent class work in sustainability and could be a word/ concept, a quote, or a picture (photograph or diagram)…The learning was in the questioning and defense of what [was] on the tile,” she explains.

Her Three More game familiarizes students “with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. The year is 2025, and there are concerns that some of the goals will not be reached. Each person picks three of the 17 goals [that] they wish to alter in some way and [names] three additional goals,” Macdonald relates.

In each group, she explains, “two participants [decide] the steps they would take to introduce a project linked to the goals selected from the survey. The other two…[ask] searching questions about planning and implementation. The learning was in the questioning and defense of what was being proposed and audited.” Scores were determined by “clarity of proposal and feasibility, and additional points were given for incorporating an education project.”

Designing STEM Games

Whether teachers use commercially available games or create their own, they should always be sure to follow lab safety practices during gameplay. Other considerations include making sure all students can participate.

Valarie Broadhead, science teacher at Aliso Viejo Middle School in Aliso Viejo, California, says she has incorporated games “as part of my NGSS instructional strategies,” designing them “around special education students, then add[ing] on features and increas[ing] complexity for general education students.” She incorporates “visual aspects…especially [in] the instructions and content. Pictures, models, and the use of colors also help English language learners,” she notes.

Broadhead uses very large text so materials are easier to read, especially for students with visual impairments. She also places “pre-printed items (games, learning objectives, instructions, etc.) on their desks so they don’t have to look up at the board, reducing possible errors.” By using microphone enhancement, headsets with volume control, and print materials, students with hearing disabilities “don’t have to ‘hear’ the instructions to know how to play the game,” she explains.

“The great thing about science is that it’s really an active, engaging discipline, so games can be created [in which] student players are doing the work of the field,” contends Kathleen Mercury, who teaches gifted middle school students at Ladue Middle School in St. Louis, Missouri. “Students can [play] the role of engineers, learning how to create circuits by playing the right cards, or players can learn about the cycle of photosynthesis by moving the different elements around.”

Because she is “passionate about helping other teachers incorporate games and game design in their classes,” Mercury shares her game design teaching resources for free at www.kathleenmercury.com. “Playtesting prototypes is such an important part of the process for students to see,” she says, because “games, like any other open-ended work or research that starts with a question, are created through a process of inquiry, testing, and refinement. By modeling my willingness to engage in this process and to take feedback, they see the value of it, and that makes it easier for them to create and show their own unfinished work.”

Lindsay Portnoy, co-founder and chief learning officer of Killer Snails, a learning games company, says, “We wanted to make science accessible, but also impactful, so all of our games are based on both dynamic STEM content and extant standards.” In the BioDive game, for example, “student scientists collect data to iterate on their models as they work out their hypothesis, identifying how abiotic factors impact biotic factors across three marine ecosystems,” she notes.

“We’re also all parents and want to make games that are equally fun to play in class or at [home],” Portnoy asserts.

This article originally appeared in the January 2019 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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