Literacy in Sciences
Author: Adriana Lefter
Stories, fairytales are one of the learning ways of children since they are young, they come into contact with life experiences, emotions, find themselves in these experiences and learn. If parents or grandparents were reading at first, when they learn the alphabet students can read by themselves to gain new knowledge, to exercise new skills and abilities and to develop new skills. We learnt to do this together with students and teachers from other 4 countries participating into an Erasmus Project Soft Skills for a better life.
Using the text Lars and the Husky puppy, students found the way to learn about the Universe, planet Earth, Continents and Poles, animals and inhabitants.
Even though the main characters of the texts were a polar bear and a husky puppy, it helped us a lot to research the life of the North Pole. Using the Scientix resource on MOST UNCOMMON ARCTIC ANIMALS the students thus discovered the not at all a simple life the animals are living.
Moreover, together we studied the solar system, built it from recyclable materials, then using worksheets, online tools, learned about the continents, mostly focusing on the North Pole. The students read about it in the encyclopedias, on the Internet and then together we selected the most important information about the climate, the climate change and its impact on the life of North Poll, in particular, the affect on the glaciers that are melting faster now.
It was impressive to find out how the animals from North Poll were adapted to live at that temperature, and we experienced this using fat and ice cubes. Students could feel how fat protects the body from the very cold winter. Playing and learning was a pleasurable experience for the children.
Teaching soft skills through STEM & reading online
Students reposted from the point of view of each character, surpassing the states, emotions and impressions. They used videos and were helped by parents who were permanently with us during this period, being learning partners. Children and parents improvised costumes, disguised themselves as the chosen character and it was a creative and original activity.
Author: Adriana Lefter
My name is Adriana Lefter, primary school teacher in School Elena Doamna, Tecuci – Romania and with my 8 years old students we start a great adventure during this online teaching period.
Starting with the text The Lighthouse keeper`s lunch that we read it online in our meetings, using Google Meet, together and in groups, we explored the text and we carried out various activities. It was a good opportunity for students to communicate in their mother tongue, to express and interpret concepts, thoughts, feelings, facts and opinions in writing activities as well as communicating them in a foreign language for interpretations or translation of words and expressions. They did this creating comics about the text using online tools as toonytool or drawings by hand, and they add them all on Google Classroom, the platform that we use in this period.
We also learned about the history of lighthouses, studying them on the geographical map, Google maps, the position of the most famous lighthouses. We also learned how they were built, their height, position, shape of the headlamps and we used a lot of resources from Twinkl. It was the first time students discovered what a radar is, where it is used and how. Together with their parents, the students discovered how an electrical circuit works, what materials are needed and what is the lightning bolt, located at the top of a lighthouse.
While reading the text they discovered what lunch Mr Gringling had, which we wanted to make as healthy as possible. The students had to write different healthy lunch recipes and draw them (to prepare lunch for Mr Gringling). They also found out the weight of different items in their lunch. What is the total weight? We choose two types of sandwich and we made a Venn diagram to show which they liked or did not like, using canva/venn diagrams, also during our online meetings.
It was a very pleasant experience when the students modeled a lighthouse using dough made of flour, salt and water; the house of the lighthouse keeper, the waves and the seagulls. First I prepared the model, I presented it during the meeting, I sent them the recipe, then with the family they played homemade „plasticine”. Parents were very excited about the activity, acknowledging that since they were young children they have not modeled anything. I recommended to use any material found in the house, to use recyclable materials, thus giving them a new use.
Using this model, the students presented their ideas about other solutions they had developed so that the seagulls would not eat Mr Gringling’s lunch. How? Using technology (sound sensor, a small robot to carry the basket) changing habits, inventing new ways to pack the basket, to feed the seagulls so that lunch to reach Mr Gringling.
Thus we acquired new skills, we practiced our creativity, organization, confidence, knowledge of languages, communication, desire to change all using STEM, because STEM is everywhere, STEM means all disciplines together. All these activites are developed together with teachers and students from other 4 countries into in Erasmus KA229 project Soft skills for a better life.
STEM in
primary school, great opportunity for students and teachers
The STEM Discovery Week 2018 was a great opportunity for primary school teachers from School Elena Doamna, from Tecuci, Romania, to use STEM methodologies to study natural disasters.
During the entire week, students studied avalanches, earthquakes, floods, winds and tornadoes, landslides and erosion, forest fires and volcanoes. By making use of STEM methodologies, they experimented, built and learned in a different, but much more interesting, way about natural processes that take place all around us and sometimes affect people’s lives. Parents participated in the activities, visited the hall where the final products were exhibited, listened to the explanations of the children and the information discovered by studying in the most varied forms.
On Thursday, school teachers presented in a workshop their STEM plans to teachers from other schools invited to this event. A great opportunity was the presentation made by some guests about robotics and robots. All were enthusiastic and excited about what they were doing.
On Friday, the last day of SDW 2018, 430 students from primary schools participated in a flash-mob called SAY YES TO STEM, because students wanted to attract the attention of teachers and researchers to move towards this approach in Romanian education.
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