STEM+LESSONS+and+RESOURCES


 * Tools to Empower Staff: Integrating Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Learning in After-School** is the title of a session I attended at the 2010 21st CCLC meeting in Washington, DC in June. Rachel Chase and Ben Dworken lead the workshop and provided several key ideas to keep in mind as well as web-links and lessons to incorporate into STEM curriculum.

Their focus was incorporating STEM into After-School learning experiences. The average student who does STEM outside school is more likely to end up in the STEM pipeline than the high performing student who only does science in school - engagement! (Tai 2006)

Another word that keep coming up was Co-Inquiry - the staff learning at the same time as the student. How can we find out together? This empowers the students! Also creates the atmosphere where their is shared learning happening...not a teacher imparting knowledge to students but a true community of learning where the teacher is an active learning alongside the students.

Very important for all planned lessons that the teacher does the activities prior to the students doing them. This allows for a lesson to have all the kinks worked out prior to implementation. This allows teachers to develop appropriate questions (HOTS) to further encourage discovery and investigation. There are no wrong answers and multiple correct solutions are possible.

STEM should be: Engaging Hands-on Co-inquiry based Fun Interdisciplinary Inspires creativity and questions Flexible

Budget for preparation time and lesson planning** Use common easily found materials Relevance to real life scenarios Inquiry based Safety precautions Size of group - when grouping children 2-3 is optimal. When you add that 4th child or more someone ends up with nothing to do! Individualize
 * Always consider!

Experiment - NEAT .... DNA from a Strawberry 1 very ripe strawberry 1 zip lock 1/4 cup H2O 1/4 teaspoon salt (breaks up protein chains around nucleic acids) Squirt of dish soap (dissolve fat/lipids in cell wall / nuclear membrane) Coffee filter, rubber band and clear plastic cup Very cold rubbing alcohol

Strawberry goes in zip lock and mush up...thoroughly.... Add salt and water and mush/mix. Then add dish soap mixing gently - get as much air out of bag as possible first to prevent bubbles forming. Place coffee filter on clear plastic cup and hold in place with rubber band. Pour mixture through filter. Return waste to zip lock for disposal. Decant VERY cold rubbing alcohol on top of mixture - alcohol will form a layer on top when poured into cup at an angle - need 1/4" to 1/2" layer. DNA comes to the top (looks like stringy snot) Use toothpick to pull out strands of DNA.

Extract from other fruits as well. Things to consider: Can you do this with all fruits? What about more fatty fruit like avocado vs banana vs peach How about human cheek cells?

www.wonderhowto.com/how-to-extract-dna-from-strawberries-home-267319/ www.amnh.org/ology/ www.pbs.org/teachers/scigirls/activities/ @http://mixinginmath.terc.edu @http://wonderwise.unl.edu