Student Profiling for STEM Success

Students at the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Academy at Northwest High School started this school year with a project where their goal was to further define what it is to be a STEM student.  The project, Profile of a STEM Student, utilized NISD's own Profile of a Graduate as a starting point, but then elaborated and transformed the profile to their own definition for STEM students.  According to Jayden, a student in Mrs. Garrett's engineering class, "the NISD Profile of a Graduate was too broad for us, so this project helped us design one for STEM that was more specific to what we need to learn for college and our careers."

Project Notebooks

The project consisted of multiple parts: gathering information, generating categories for the profile, building their profile, designing a presentation, and giving the presentation in class.  "We documented every step of the process in our Project Notebooks," said Jayden, "including brainstorming, our presentation notes, and our categories that we designed for the profile."


The greatest part of the project was the opportunity for students to choose their own categories that they thought best exemplified the profile of a STEM student.  While some categories were required by the project instructions (core beliefs, mission, college and career readiness), the students got to choose three of their own, such as work-ethic, relationships, responsibilities, or anything else they thought was most important for them.  Chris and Matt, two students from the same group, explained to me some of their group's choices.  "STEM Academy classes use lots of Project Based Learning, so we chose what we thought was best for that."  For example, "we chose work-ethic as one of our categories because time management and working as a team on a project is important for getting things done, just like in a job."

Mrs. Garrett's class

After assembling their profiles, the groups presented their work to the class.  They also got to choose their presentation medium, as long as it was an online presentation.  Most groups chose to use Google Slides for their presentation.  "It's just easier to use and access," said Mark.  "Collaboration was important, and Slides allowed us to all work on the presentation at the same time."  All the presentations were judged by student peers, with senior students judging freshman projects, in order to give constructive feedback on their first ever STEM presentations.

For students, choice is important.  This project gave them a choice, not only in the project itself, but in creating the ideal profile for the rest of their school career as a STEM student.  Check out the links below to see the project instructions, the grading rubric, and some examples of the visual portion of the student presentations.

• Project Instructions
• Project Grading Rubric
• Presentation Example 1
• Presentation Example 2

A Smashing Good Graph Lesson

The Standards

Students at Pike began the study of physics concepts in Scott Suhr's 6th Grade Pre-AP Science class by learning to calculate speed (6.8C). They built on this foundation knowledge when they explored measuring and graphing changes in motion (6.8D).

The Foundation

Students started by exploring graphing motion. They built Distance/Time graphs from scratch and through the LoggerPro motion detector. This helped develop a common vocabulary that facilitated a better understanding of key components in a motion graph. With the traditional approach to graphing and the LoggerPro technology a deeper knowledge was built. As a result the students were able to synthesize the understanding to evaluate the Distance/Time graphs.

The Student Driven Process

Next, students were challenged to interpret graphs of motion…for example "What does the slope of the plot on a Distance/Time graph show about an object motion?" This is where using the LoggerPro motion detectors enhanced student comprehension. By using the LoggerPro motion detector program, students got real time, instantaneous feedback supporting their tactile connection between the speed of their motion and the slope of the plot forming on a Distance/Time graph.  

Following this, students were given the task to prepare a presentation documenting their analysis of the LoggerPro generated Distance/Time graphs. Presentations were done using a combination of LoggerPro generated graphs, Screencasto-matic to share their analysis, and Google Presentations to allow for collaboration. The end result were presentations that not only shared their analysis and evaluation of the graphs, but taught 5^th graders about the relationship of speed to time and distance.

Example of Product

 

Click on image to go to presentation by Danny G.
Cole B., Sylvanna W., and Ryan J.

Next Steps
Students continue to use skills built with Google Presentations in a variety of science inquiry opportunities and PBL events.  The greatest benefit has been the ability for students to import multiple technology generated applications into presentations. Google presentations was the platform that made this collaborative presentation  a possibility.




Written in collaboration with Scott Suhr, 6th Grade Science, Gene Pike Middle School