STEAM Unit

Hi my name is Carla Freeman and this is my

steam instructional unit portfolio.

My title was COVID-19 response in future planning.

This is the unit problem that I gave students.

They were to pick a topic research the topic in

the context of COVID-19 in various countries.

Come up with a guideline for that topic for a

future pandemic and then have the chance to actually present

that to the Health Board.

Of course with the state of the pandemic in our

country right now, They do not have the chance to

meet with the local or the State Health Board but

it's set up in a way that that could absolutely

happen in the future.

The two driving questions, how have countries around the world

responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and in what ways do

varying factors such as weather and climate society, government and

economies influence the outcome of a pandemic and I'll get

to how I use those questions more in the future.

This unit took place in a civics and economics class.

Specifically the students were in unit one which for them

cover citizenship, government, overview and foundations of U.

S. Government.

I had the honour of co teaching with a fellow

co worker who we've worked together for a few years

and used to be in the same department together.

Um And she was incredible.

It was a great experience.

She allowed for me to have quite a bit of

flexibility which I really appreciate and we had some great

reflective conversations at the end of do lessons.

I also will say that she had a lot of

questions in terms of planning because I think a lot

of teachers at my school felt like it's not within

reach to do projects like this.

So I was very, very happy for that exposure and

hoping that's going to lead to more conversations in my

building. I will say it was a little bit of

an adjustment just due to the fact of I made

this unit with the idea that it would be in

my classroom and so a lot of the steps and

a lot of the ideas that I put into it

were based off of how I conduct a classroom environment

and the way that I go about class management, she

is a little bit different and so just adjusting with

that, not trying to step on anyone's toes, I definitely

didn't want to make it weird with her, with both

of us coming and going with those kids.

Um, so, you know, they knew I was only going

to be there for 2.5 weeks, so that was a

little bit of an adjustment, but again, I don't think

there was another person in the building who would have

had so much success as if she had with it.

Um, so I'm just really, really happy that we were

able to work together for that.

It was an honors third period, they were mostly ninth

graders, a lot of 15 year olds, I think there

was one or 2, 14 year olds and I think

to 16 year olds.

Um, so very much they were all the same age

even though it's two different grade levels and of course

everyone's kind of feeling the effects of the pandemic.

And so it took some adjusting.

Anyways. I wouldn't say that they are at the same

places where a normal grade level would be with that.

So we were talking some to just about how to

research and how to act in group settings and those

sorts of things just because it's been a while since

they've been able to be together and do that.

So that was some adjusting that just naturally needed to

happen as well as for integrating the steam subject areas.

Science is pretty natural.

We actually brought in weather and climate to just talking

about how people act different, different seasons, how different places

have different climates and that's going to impact the response

as well as the mandates.

Technology was mostly found within the research portion of this

project. So all of them shared a google doc.

That's how they collaborated flip grid was used for an

expert panel and all sides is how we started our

research. I could tell early on, like I said, just

adjustment. They hadn't been in school, they hadn't done a

lot of research in a while.

They felt a bit overwhelmed because they know how much

information is out there on covid.

So we used all sides as a starting place for

everyone and I think I would just adjust that in

the future to do that with different classes too.

Good thing about all sides, They are actually divided out

by topics.

So it allowed students to look at their specific topic

and it goes ahead and let you look at different

articles next to each other and you can compare and

contrast the biases within them.

So very good source.

Very glad that that's what we used at the forefront

of our research engineering.

This is mostly just through the process itself.

They are aware of the design process.

I brought it back up to them and I used

it to just kind of prompt them as we walked

through to make sure that they were staying on pace

and they were also critically thinking about the guidelines they

were making art was incorporated in the product area had

one group, they ended up making slides, but they explained

in the slides what it would look like.

They wanted to do a series of social media posts.

And so they had that all charted out some of

the topics they'd consider.

But they said that they would want to work with

psychologist and time it out to win the post would

actually drop the topics that would be talked about different

times of the year.

They would do different things.

So it was very interesting to me and I loved

hearing that I do think that just because the pandemic

we didn't get as much creativity and some of the

responses as normal because they felt somewhat limited just because

they can't get up and do as much.

Um But absolutely some of them love the idea of

making a commercial as well.

So I thought that was really cool.

Math mostly charge statistics, that's where we see a lot

of that integration there.

Some of them struggled a bit but it was fine,

we just went up to them, we helped them out

a lot of times.

That's just because they're going to be taking Math three

in about a year, year and a half from where

they are right now And Math three is where they

really get into stats.

So they were relying on like three year old understanding

charts and those sorts of things.

So we just helped out individual groups as they needed

it. Other subject areas, lots of the skill based standards

in our english standards or E.

L. A.

They came through specifically in communication and writing as well

as context, understanding a lot of those critical parts of

stories. They saw that in the real world with this.

So that was awesome.

And then C.

T. We have a really awesome career and technical education

program. So we partnered with some teachers.

Um there was one in particular that he is he

does adobe and talks about video and just editing design

and so that was really cool to have him for

the product piece authentic wise.

I'll say that.

I feel like students thought that it was pretty authentic.

Um, they were making comments throughout in terms of, oh

now I understand why this mandate existed.

And so it was cool to see them starting to

connect their observations to research and actually understanding the purpose

behind them.

So that was the coolest part I think just seeing

them in terms of making those natural connections and it

completely being them lead.

Uh, so I was, I didn't want to say I

was leery about it, but I was just like, I

hope they make these connections and what's so cool is

they totally made those connections on their own and just

the way that it was structured.

So this is so cool to see this actually play

out. So here's some pictures of the actual Time.

This was day one, they read through there sheet that

explain the criteria as well as the rubric and then

they moved into this Pablo it.

So this palette was actually just those two driving questions

and wanted to see where they started at essentially lots

of buzzwords, lots of surface level stuff.

Some of them, I was impressed, took what we had

talked about in our intro discussion and put it in

there. So you'll see some kind of random misplace things

like they're talking about population, They're talking about weather and

it's very specific what the rest of their post isn't.

Um That's again them kind of latching on to what

we had just talked about.

So they were pretty honest with me afterwards and said,

yeah, we just didn't know.

Um so I love that honesty to here is our

brainstorming board.

Um in the end we ended up having to groups

to mental health, three groups to travel and one do

sports. So here's them working the way that we did

it, they were allowed to work with groups for a

grand total of 15 minutes because of COVID just in

terms of close contact.

So how we did this was they worked with groups

like this and then they would work individually.

This was probably the best random adjustment that had to

happen. And the reason why I say that is they

were much more productive in their group settings because they

were working individually.

So they're working on the same document as each other

so they can collaborate just virtually when they're not right

up next to each other.

However, what it did was whenever they actually were next

to each other, it was much more meaningful and group

centered about the next steps.

So this was really cool and I think I would

actually keep that format of them working individually, some collaborating

and then also working physically near each other, mixing it

up in that way we did a quick jam board

actually when they were in their groups.

Big thing that I'll say about this is I wish

I would have a lot of more time.

They made some really cool connections and I didn't have

enough time quite to break down with them.

I did at the end of the day and so

we got into it and then to with the I

wonders it started even more conversations and I just really

wish I could have allotted more time.

Here is them getting the QR code for the flip

grid. They had four different topics.

Two of them were people in the building to other

teachers, one was the product design and the environmental and

seasonal impact.

Those were two teachers that agreed to help out with

this. The travel expert was actually the vice president of

line maintenance for american airlines and the government was the

subcommittee Director for Transportation Security in the House of Representatives.

Some cool connections there, only about four people took advantage

of it.

It was four different groups but at the same time

and their conversations are great.

I just really wish more people would have done it.

So that's a big thing there.

I think I would make it a great requirement in

the future.

But this did work having them post their questions under

those topics and then having those people respond.

It was a really cool way to engage in conversation.

So here again uh this is actually towards the end

and I am introducing their last paddle it, you can

even tell by looking at it and I'm just gonna

kind of quickly summarize through them a lot more depth.

They actually use some of the statistics that they were

getting and their answers were backed up this time.

So we even talked about them before and after and

they thought that that was so cool, so it was

cool to see how excited they got about it as

well, just seeing that growth as for some of that

individual work, that's what that would look like.

So they were on the same presentations, this was presentation

workday. Um they were on the same presentations but they

were sitting at their desk but they were still able

to collaborate.

So very, very cool, like I said the way that

that adjusted so just to kind of quickly go through

some of the products, Talk about some of the pluses

and minuses.

So this is the uh we're going to start with

the research documents, there's two parts, so as for the

research documents, this is an example of a really awesome

one. They have their sections, they, even at the end

have the guideline out outline of exactly what they wanted

to look like and lots of group collaboration on that

one, then you have something like this and we had

a conversation about it, it's mostly just links and that

was the entire group, they did it that way, we

did see some people bringing in some snippets that was

really cool to see and they even brought that over

into their slide presentation.

So these are some of those products, this group did

a few different ones.

I thought that was pretty cool that they didn't just

focus on one aspect of travel.

Um but they focused on air border and they also

did car transportation which was kind of interesting with this,

they focused on giving information to the citizen again thought

that was very cool, mental health, saw lots of statistics

and then they even incorporated that into their game plan

which I love the fact that they took that and

put it into their guidelines.

So seeing a lot of those connections being made, there

were something like this again where all we're really seeing

is just kind of them taking the ideas of now

and putting them together are not really doing anything different.

And so I definitely would add something to the rubric

that says that you've got to at least explain why

you're doing what you're doing because some of the groups

definitely just copied what was going on right now.

So even thinking about some of those different ideas, a

lot of it is just tweaking.

I really love this project and what was even more

encouraging was seeing how the students responded.

So this is from their survey here, a lot of

them talked about it helped me learn more about covid

procedures, how to research, I thought it was fun learning

this content.

Um I had, somebody told me, I didn't even think

about how government differences would cause different reactions.

And so I actually understand different governments better now.

That's incredible because that's even better.

Um, and even with that being said in terms of

content and civic, so this was supposed to be civic

specific. There were only a few students who said they

don't feel like it helped them.

Um, so overall quite a bit successful.

I know that there are some definite tweaking that could

be done to assist in that and make it more

beneficial to them.

And so things like, especially some of that rubric adjustment,

I think honestly allowing more time.

I think 2.5 weeks was not enough.

I think that I should have extended it and then

have harsher deadlines in between.

So your research is done at this point, we are

talking about it at this point.

I think that would allow for some of those really

awesome organic conversations that happened.

I think if we stretch the unit out we can

have those more in depth more often.

So big things like that.

But a lot of it's tweaking.

I think the core of this project is good.

I'm so excited that I'm hoping more of these projects

can happen at my school, especially now that I've seen

how successful they can be and how it really does

help the students understand the material better.

And so with that being said, moving forward, I just

want to be a support in my school building and

start to make more steam units happen.

So thank you so much.

STEAM Unit

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