Work in Progress: Afterschool STEM/Literacy Program-A Description of the Process

摘要

During the 2015-2016 school year, existing engineering activity modules were modified and facilitated as part of a pilot afterschool Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)/Literacy program. The goal of this program was to increase the reading scores of third grade students. The engineering activity modules modified for this pilot project were developed as for use by undergraduate engineering students to engage in outreach with K-12 students at area schools. For the STEM/Literacy afterschool program, the existing modules were modified to include significant literacy components. Examples of these components included fictional stories that served as the basis or hook for the engineering design challenge, informative reading from books and the internet that helped the children solve their engineering challenge or that provided historical information about a related challenge, use of an interactive science notebook for recording results and observations and innovative communication strategies such as "speed talk" where a student was asked to tell their partner everything they learned in 20 seconds. The afterschool program met two days a week from October through April with 13 regular participants. Preliminary results of this pilot project showed that the STEM/Literacy afterschool program helped provide significant gains in the reading scores of the third grade student participants. This paper will not focus on these preliminary results, but instead describe how the modules were modified to include the literacy components. It will also provide recommendations for a future program that will include the culturally appropriate reading materials.