As part of Daniel Boone Area School District’s priority focus area of a competitive curriculum, along with the core belief and value of critical thinking and problem solving, Daniel Boone has been making strides to integrate STEM learning across the curriculum. STEM, or Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, is not just the subject learning, but an integrated, interdisciplinary, and student-centered approach to learning that encourages curiosity, creativity, artistic expression, collaboration, computational thinking, communication, problem-solving, critical thinking, and design thinking (PDE Definition). In accordance with this belief, Daniel Boone has been utilizing its Instructional Coaching staff to help integrate STEM into our curriculum.
The Berks County Intermediate Unit has a lending library of technical resources including robotics that our students have access to. Our teachers have worked with our students using:
Osmo education tools integrated with student iPads for grades K to 2 for skills including counting, word formation, art/tangrams, and coding
Dash robots to reinforce math concepts, computational thinking, and coding, grades K to 2
Sphero robots to reinforce geometric concepts with coding, grades 3 to 5
Cue robots to reinforce geometric concepts with coding, grade 8
Cue robots in Tech Ed robotics course, grade 8
Ozobobots, Dash, Cue, Sphero BOLT and RVR robots with grades 3 to 5 during STEM Fest held the afternoons of PSSA testing
Our students also engage in computational thinking and data analysis integrated into core curriculum courses. They use hands-on materials to create, build, and apply engineering design concepts. Continuing to integrate STEM across the curriculum is a focus of our innovation efforts here at Daniel Boone Area School District.
