SEVECEN Sayı: 29 - 2019

40 S E V E C E N 2 0 2 0 Burcu Zavrak STORYTELLINGWITH STEAM IN LANGUAGE LEARNING Steam stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math. Each of these subjects have a common approach to teaching because learning happens naturally as children explore and play. Let’s define each term before we share our inclass steam activity. Science: Children learn by observing nature. They walk around the garden, collect things and observe the changes. They mix and combine things and see what happens. They do basic experiments and learn about the world. Technology: We don’t mean cell phones or computers. In steam activity, technology involves things children make by themselves such as boats, wheels, etc. By making these, children learn through practice and enhance creativity. Engineering: It involves Science, Math and Technology. Children use materials to create. Art: Children paint, pretend, sing, draw, use their creativity and body language through role playing. Math: Involves shapes, numbers, size, and sequence. A steam activity we did in Red class evolved from a story book called The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It’s about the life cycle of a butterfly and also includes vocabulary of days and food. Instead of just explaining the life cycle in a traditional way, we decided to observe the life cycle of a butterfly. We researched into how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, how it eats leaves and how they grow and transform into a butterfly. First we collected leaves and made our own boxes. Second we acted out the life cycle of a butterfly by pretending to be a caterpillar coming out of the box which was suppose to be a cocoon. We said “I’m hungry!” and as a group we started to name the days of the week and ate a specific food on a particular day for the caterpillar to eat. In summary, we acted out the whole story with props we collected and made which helped us understand the story and learn the vocabulary and cycle of a butterfly. To scaffold the learning we then sequenced the stages of the life cycle in the correct order. As a result, we used STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) to read and understand a story and have fun during our learning process.