Is Art and Music a Physical Activity in Collaborative Learning

Schools and educators are pressured to hitting certain learning targets and accomplish specific test scores. It'due south easy to get and so focused on these goals that you tune out lessons in other subjects and topics that don't concern you. However, more teachers are realizing the benefits of cross-curricular education and how collaborative learning can aid students across multiple subjects.

A few educators are even irresolute the STEAM acronym to brand sure every subject is incorporated. For example, the creators behind the web log Getting Nerdy with Mel and Gerdy shared their play on the STEAM acronym:

• Social Studies (history, current events, geography)
• Engineering science (computers, programming, and technology)
• ELA (reading, comprehension, and writing)
• Arts (music, art, drama, and debate)
• Math (computation, analyzing problems, creating graphs/tables)

This acronym encompasses the entire learning spectrum, then some teachers (similar those in social studies or linguistic communication departments) don't feel pressured into adding math or programming into their lessons. The fit feels more natural.

Bank check out these 10 great examples of collaborative learning with STEAM and how information technology benefits students in the long run.

1. Sharing Murder Mystery Plots with Ozobot

Some people think writing and coding require two different skill sets, simply Gina Ligouri , tenth grade English literature teacher at Montour High Schoolhouse in Pittsburgh, proves them wrong.

She challenged her students to create Murder Mystery stories with clearly adult plotlines, characters, motives, and results. Once students had crafted their stories, they made visual storyboards, and used Ozobots to motility around the board and share their tales with students.

This project earned Ms. Ligouri our Creator of the Month spot for March. She shows how coding is really storytelling, while education her students how to tell stories with detailed plots that keep readers engaged.

ii. Collaborating to Create a Weather Balloon

Cross-curricular pedagogy starts with teachers. If teachers don't take infinite to collaborate and come up with plans and connections together, how can they look students to course these connections on their own?

"Often teachers have footling understanding of what students are working on in other courses," educator Jordan Catapano writes at TeachHUB . "[They] take little fourth dimension to speak with colleagues from other disciplines."

This has led some schools to focus on collaboration and make information technology a priority. Hood River Middle Schoolhouse in Oregon, for example, actively encourages collaboration and sets up weekly meetings to review collaboration opportunities.

One sixth-class science, math, and language arts teacher, Adam Smith, shared his contempo collaborative project: a loftier-distance atmospheric condition balloon. His strategy was to notice one collaborative partner to start with, and so he turned to the schoolhouse's 6th-grade engineering teacher. The ii worked together, building on each others ideas and excitement.

iii. Developing a Collective Terminate-of-Year Project

When done well, cross-curricular efforts can actually pay off and the experience can stick with students for years.

Free Technology for Teachers founder Richard Byrne said this happened with ane project he developed 13 years agone in which students had to make recommendations on whether to increment or decrease spending on Mars exploration.

The project was done at the end of the year, with students using math, scientific discipline, and writing principles they learned over the past several months. Students needed to come up with their own arguments, and nowadays them clearly.

To this day, Byrne has some of his quondam students (at present in their late 20s) tell him they recall the projection. It helped many see that "even though they weren't 'math people' or weren't 'scientific discipline people,' they could employ math and science concepts in a way that wasn't but 'solving a trouble.'"

4. Encouraging Creativity through Music and Art

On a smaller level, teachers can combine dissimilar learning elements within the same classroom. Music educator Amy Willis Burns says her Pre-Thousand workshop encourages children to explore STEAM subjects through music. Students create, explore, and movement while listening to live music. Some congenital structures with blocks, others painted and drew, then danced with scarves.

At times, Willis Burns would go over to a student and play what she felt based on the work they created. This showed how music tin can bring fine art to life, and how multiple learning elements work together as 1. More than importantly, the students were given free reign to be totally artistic, equally without the music, the educator would accept been guiding students through the lesson and what she wanted them to do.

Joachim Horn , founder and CEO of edtech visitor SAM Labs, agrees that music both spurs inventiveness and connects students to STEAM. In his article Educational activity Applied science, he explains how music can become a platform for programming through music composition.

"They tin create certain notes, edit the pitch and the sequence, essentially coding and writing their own songs," Horn writes. "By doing and so, children express themselves past crafting or post-obit musical patterns, whilst likewise developing their coding skills."

Even if students don't realize what they're doing, they are building out coding and composition skills they can use at an older age.

5. Improving Technical Writing Skills Related to Other Projects

Former high schoolhouse literary specialist Amy Dark-brown says ane of her favorite STEAM lessons was letting students create a project and then asking them to write out instructions on how that projection could be recreated.

"As a student — and even as an developed — it'south difficult to be very specific and detailed in an explanation of how to practise something," she writes. "When a student is able to recreate the initial projection through an explanation from other students, success is achieved."

This introduces them to the concept of technical writing, and teaches students to instruct others and think through the work that they do.

Cross-curricular education focuses on skills and long-term learning. While individual facts and topics are of import, students will utilize the skills they develop throughout their whole life.

"The educatee of History who is taught research skills may well already take learned such skills in English, or Science, or Music," David Roy, Ph.D. at Teacher Magazine writes. "However, for the educatee to brand the connections betwixt those subjects and shared skills, it must be made explicit."

Research is just i example. This learning model can be practical to a variety of concepts, such as critical thinking, writing, and creativity.

6. Focusing on Language in Science and Math Lessons

Yous tin't embrace STEAM without collaboration.

"STEAM is not a curriculum, but rather an approach to teaching and learning rooted in accurate cross-curricular integration," music educator and arts integration consultant Brianne Gidcumb writes at Education Closet . "STEAM should not be a collection of projects, but rather a mindset for learning based in process."

She discourages teachers from following a "Stop and STEAM" mentality, but rather integrating the processes and contents of all subjects existence taught throughout the learning experience.

Chief schoolhouse teacher Chantelle Rich told The New Zealand Curriculum that she used this arroyo with vocabulary lessons. Students who come from disadvantaged areas can accept poorer vocabularies, so she wanted to comprise vocabulary learning across different subjects. She fix word walls in different classrooms and changed them along with the lessons. Students were also asked to piece of work in groups where they could practice their new vocabularies together.

Past the end of the year, students had a better understanding of the concepts, because reading and language elements were part of the science process. Vocabulary wasn't siloed from other subjects, and STEAM learning wasn't put in a box.

7. Turning PE Into a Learning Experience

STEAM concepts tin can be reinforced in pretty much any subject. Concrete educator Chad Triolet says incorporating various subjects into his PE lessons can be as unproblematic as basing team names on the dissimilar chemistry elements that students are learning almost in science class, or assigning each team a different European country. This reinforces the learning aspects in a fun manner.

That existence said, this required collaboration. If Triolet in the PE department doesn't know what students are learning in other classes, he tin can't incorporate those lessons into his classroom. When the collaboration framework exists, students benefit by seeing the topic from a different angle.

"Students [learn] a variety of different approaches to the aforementioned topic," English teacher Bailey Cavender writes at The Educator's Room . "Some students do non connect to poesy but can connect with music or art."

She uses the example of the Harlem Renaissance . When learning nigh this period, some students will exist interested in the people and facts featured in history class, while others will want to read the poetry from that menstruation or heed to the music. At the end of the year, all students will accomplish the finish goal of having a better understanding of the cultural movement in its entirety.

viii. Combining Ozobot with Oregon Trail

Even tech-based learning is getting a modernistic makeover with STEAM. By generations might not take learned coding through Ozobot, but they likely braved the wilderness in the simulation game Oregon Trail . Teams in social studies solved problems equally they nearly traveled across the country, caring for their oxen and hoping they didn't take hold of a variety of diseases.

Some teachers are moving Oregon Trail to the modern era, by connecting the game to programming lessons. Uncomplicated school technology instructor Cindy Gonzalez was one of our Creators of the Month in April. She and another teacher in that location developed The Ozzie Oregon Trail Project where students research historical events and locations and develop a map for the Ozobot wagons to follow as they encounter pioneer challenges. This makes historical topics more than engaging while adding coding to the curriculum.

9. Connecting with STEAM Researchers

Cantankerous-curricular learning connects students with other classes and subjects, merely information technology can as well link them with professionals in STEAM fields. These provide fantastic opportunities for deeper learning.

Lucy Madden, CEO of Messages to a Pre-Scientist, adult a pen pal plan to encourage writing in traditionally STEAM subjects. Students write about what they're learning or other not-fiction topics, simply they also write letters with stories and artistic elements. These letters are written during course fourth dimension and then sent to pen pal scientists around the globe.

The letters aren't graded, and students receive feedback in the form of response letters. This makes writing a low-stakes, fun activity that withal sharpens students' writing skills. To engagement, there are pen pals in 46 states and xviii countries.

10. Designing Projects That Kids Care Most

Teachers certainly intendance most making sure students acquire what is expected of them, but they also want to tap into a love of learning and accost student interests. Melissa Zeitz , Ozobot's July Creator of the Month combined coding with fine art, scientific discipline, and history by encouraging her fourth grade students to create representations of popular national parks.

Students learned most geography and history while expressing their artistic talent. They tied information technology all together with programming every bit part of the presentation process.

Teachers practice so much to help their students larn. They don't accept to be experts on every unmarried field of study, but can collaborate with those who are to create exciting educational experiences that also drive results.

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