STEAM Meets Story

Book excerpt: This innovative STEAM guide will help general and special education teachers to increase effective instruction with adolescents (grades 5-10). The authors show teachers how to link STEM concepts with popular fiction and film selections as a catalyst to launch student interactions, discussions, projects, and investigations. This approach will promote problem solving and reasoning skills by initiating the scientific process, rather than simply presenting established facts. The book includes a wealth of lesson plans that connect abstract STEM ideas to realistic experiences that students encounter. Sample lessons call on students to produce drawings and models that move STEM to STEAM. Grounded in popular film and some of the most-read young adult books, the text includes teaching strategies found to be effective with traditionally underserved students and those with disabilities. Book Features: Standards-based STEM lessons interrelated and interwoven with writing, reading, speaking, and other skills. Practical ideas and hands-on activities for engaging adolescents in both traditional and virtual environments. Guidance for working with diverse populations, such as students with different abilities, culturally and linguistically diverse students, translingual students, and transnational students. Templates, handouts, and lessons linked to Star Wars, The Giver, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Harry Potter, To Kill a Mockingbird, Star Trek, The Matrix, Holes, and more.