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Planning STEM learning that incorporates science, engineering, and math while developing or using technology doesn't exclude learning about art or topics in social studies, and social-emotional and reading skills. Also, a label doesn’t make a lesson a “STEM” lesson, it’s what the children do and learn that makes it STEM.
Elementary educators may have to dedicate time to focus on a single area of learning and may not be permitted to teach math concepts during a science lesson. Early childhood educators in preschools may have fewer restrictions on how the day is divided into learning units focused on one area of learning. My hope is that at all levels children will be able to develop their literacy skills, etc, in service to developing understandings about the world and beyond (including understanding people, nature, human-manufactured materials, objects in space…).
Using art materials and methods to document scientific observations is one way to include art in a STEAM lesson. But this should not replace a time for Art lessons because Art is more than a tool for documenting observations. I like children to draw the details of their observations of a worm AND in other work express how they feel about the worm, or what it might feel like to be a worm!
As Pam notes, bundling areas of learning together into one unit of time may happen as a cost saving measure but then it diminishes all the bundled areas of learning.
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