Adding STEAM to your elementary specials rotation is doable. You’ll just need to evaluate
- what you wish to accomplish through your program offerings
- what block of time you have available
- what classes do you currently offer
- which of these offered classes help you to achieve your goals
- will adding STEAM fit within your goals
For us, our schedule was as follows:
All students in our elementary (Kindergarten – 5th grade) go to specials classes for one hour a day. We knew we wanted to add STEAM to the mix, and we knew we wanted STEAM to be an hour long. Finding 60 minutes to work with meant we needed to evaluate which two 30-minute classes would be replaced by STEAM.
Our goals were to offer classes that were high engagement for students. We wanted our classes to give our students the chance for more movement. We wanted students to be put in situations that would help them with social-emotional learning (problem-solving, leadership, speaking/listening, etc) and given opportunities to develop their communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking.
Looking at our schedule, two classes that didn’t meet all of our goals surfaced as possible classes to drop from our schedule, so that STEAM could be added: Keyboarding and SSR (silent sustained reading).
One of the questions that immediately surfaced with the possibility of dropping Keyboarding was – “What impact will this have on our students?” Our high-stakes state test involves keyboarding in the writing part of the assessment. We didn’t have all the answers to this question, and still don’t, but we knew that in-classroom access to keyboarding during independent literacy work stations, along with real-world keyboarding tasks (writing) would be important parts of our students’ day.
Once we decided to add STEAM and drop Keyboarding and SSR, the next task was to make the STEAM schedule and revamp our specialist schedule. This is what my STEAM schedule looks like this year:
Find a way to add STEAM to your elementary schedule. Your students and parents will thank you for it!
Let me know if you have any questions! #HappyScheduling
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