At Kuleana Education, we believe that STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) is a natural fit for middle school students. Children are born scientists and are inherently creative and inquisitive. Our role as educators is to create a learning environment that fosters and facilitates their innate drive to discover.
Our STEM curriculum helps students develop important skills like brainstorming, critical thinking, and collaboration through a combination of curriculum-based projects, classroom lessons, and individual study.
These are just a few of the ways in which our classes have incorporated STEM education into our curriculum:
Our STEM curriculum helps students develop important skills like brainstorming, critical thinking, and collaboration through a combination of curriculum-based projects, classroom lessons, and individual study.
These are just a few of the ways in which our classes have incorporated STEM education into our curriculum:
- Students research and produce videos, blogs, podcasts, websites, and PowerPoint presentations to demonstrate their understanding of subjects. Research projects have included astronomy, weather, and marine biology.
- Students create large hands-on projects that require extensive collaboration in order to be successful. These ventures have included:
- Catapults and trebuchets for the Physic-Olympics
- Marble roller coasters for the engineering unit
- Lego robots for our computer programming
- Room-sized model of the human heart
- Making Use of Technology: Math classes are activity based, frequently using the smart board and laptops for in class exploration. Students have access to Discovery Education, which allows them to further explore concepts of interest or learning areas that require extra attention.
- Comprehensive math problem sets are given weekly. These problem sets include concepts from previous grades and units as well as current learning concepts. This reinforces the understanding that math is constantly building on itself and every concept leads to another.
- Integrating STEM into other subjects:
- Walk-Through-Time project where students create well-researched and designed posters detailing major events throughout the Universe's history. Students calculate the time between events as proportional distances and hang the display in a community location to create a to-scale model of the Universe's history.