The project
Every pupil should have equal opportunities to learn STEM through activities. That’s what our project My Box of STEAM offers, focusing on including pupils with special needs and girls. The focus will be on the use of inclusive methods in the development of project materials and guidelines.
The project will produce 35 STEAM learning boxes covering a range of STEM subjects for pupils aged 6-12, in line with school curricula. Each box will be accompanied by instructions explaining how to create them and pedagogical suggestions that teachers can use in the learning process, following a STEAM approach to facilitate understanding and implementation of the activities.
Our first pilot box
One of the main activities of the project at the moment is the development of the first pilot box. The theme of time has been chosen as an example through the making and testing of a copy of a sundial and the telling of a story. The teaching material and instructions were developed by project partners YuzuPulse (Tourcoing, France) and Logopsycom (Mons, Belgium). The narrative material and illustrations for storytelling were created by artists from project partner, Grimm Sisters, a cultural association based in Perugia, Italy. The box consists of instructional materials on how to introduce the sundial and how to build one. It also comes with lesson plans for teachers.
Testing the pilot and next steps
The box was tested with pupils aged 9-12 in Romania, Estonia, and France, and reviewed by teachers in Belgium, Croatia, and Italy.
The tests were successful, the children were active and the instructions for making the sundial were easy to understand. The story told at the beginning of the lesson was retold using figurines created by the artists, which nicely conveyed the reasons for the invention of the sundial.
The small suggestions for improvements to the notes and lesson plans made by the teachers will be taken into account . The first boxes for this project will be made available at the end of September in the mother tongue of all partners. They will tackle the following subjects: Atmosphere, Geometrical figures, How to use a map, Solid figures. Tune in in two months to try them out!
