Teach Primary Issue 18.2

An enduring love of science and the arts is within reach of all your pupils, say Gordon West and Amira Mitchell-Karam B ringing the arts cohesively into the STEM curriculum, also known as focusing on STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths), is an educational model that builds the creative problem-solving and critical thinking skills students will need in the 21st century workforce. STEAM is exciting, because it teaches the transferable skills that will be required for jobs in the future, some of which haven’t even been invented yet. Our challenge, then, as teachers, is to find interdisciplinary points that will engage pupils, and inspire them to get excited about the full range of these subjects from a young age; removing the artificial divide between ‘scientists’ and ‘artists’. At our schools, we do this in a variety of ways. Harnessing the great outdoors Implementing specialist weeks or terms can ensure a thematic approach in the way educators deliver the primary school curriculum. Our group of schools has a long-standing commitment to promoting environmental sustainability; this will therefore be the overarching learning theme of our STEAM Integrated Learning Week at Dame Bradbury’s Junior School. For our youngest pupils, this emphasis on sustainability has seen them being tasked with planting and labelling wildflower seeds and vegetables in the school garden, with biodiversity in mind. School gardens offer children the opportunity to practise their design and woodwork skills through practical explorations with materials, for example, when creating bug hotels or compost heaps. The latter offer an opportunity to learn all about worms, decomposition and how compost forms. In outdoor spaces, older children can explore STEAM more creatively, by engaging their artistic skills to create willow domes and then using maths to work out the circumference of each structure. By encouraging children across the school to learn from and engage in shared outdoor areas, these spaces become more significant to all the pupils, helping them to understand the science behind natural processes, as well as being inspired by the beauty in nature. Art and design Guided projects can help to challenge young children’s perception of art and design and enable them to express themselves while experimenting and practising problem solving. For example, at Dame Bradbury’s Junior School, as part of the National Gallery’s Take One Picture school programme, we host an annual creative exhibition at the local Bridge End Gardens in Saffron Walden, to showcase pupils’ multi-disciplinary responses to a famous painting. By offering a range of materials to work with, these design-led initiatives encourage children to get creative and experiment with all sorts of different media, including digital animations and pottery, poetry, drama and even soundscapes. Art doesn’t just encompass visual art – it includes music, too. If your school has a peripatetic music teacher, why not invite them to come and give a demonstration of different instruments, such as the trumpet or violin, to help pupils understand the science of sound? Girls’ Olympiad Sadly, in the UK, it is still the case that fewer girls than boys choose to study science subjects, particularly physics, at KS5 and beyond. Full STEAM ahead 32 | www.teachwire.net