STEM Rationale

Teaching STEM in primary school years is extremely beneficial for young

Australians. The Australian Curriculum and the Education Council’s STEM strategy

provides students with opportunities to be enriched in authentic learning, work

collaboratively with their peers and find solutions to problems. One of the Australian

STEM strategy’s’ goal is for all students to acquire core subject knowledge as well as

the skills of collaboration, critical thinking, creativity and problem solving. Building

foundational STEM knowledge needs to start from early childhood and continue

throughout primary and secondary schooling as it allows all young Australians to be

critical and creative thinkers which opens doors for students to be equipped with

necessary knowledge and skills to create ideas and solve problems. STEM, especially

technologies, can be transferred through high school and tertiary courses for students

to be led to STEM-related careers, whereby in today’s society many industries require

their employees to have STEM knowledge and skills to come up with innovative ideas,

solve problems whilst work collaboratively with co-workers.

My 8-lesson program focuses on sustainability of the ocean, more specifically

cleaning up oil spills. The 8 lessons I have planned address the cross-curriculum priority

of sustainability as it relates to the united nations sustainable development goal 14 –

life below water. Students are given a design brief where the task is to plan, design

and create a machine that will clean up an oil spill off the coast of WA. This is achieved

through firstly providing content lessons where students learn and develop knowledge

on the current issue through various resources. I then provide opportunities for the class

to discuss issues related to ocean sustainability and come up with possible solutions. I

then provide them with opportunities to apply their knowledge on how they can

sustain the ocean by designing and creating oil collecting machines that will not harm
the wildlife. Finally, my last lesson is group presentations to parents where students

apply everything they have learnt throughout the unit and communicate to others on

world issues. This is a prime example of the STEM strategy whereby students are given

a real-life issue/problem and need to use their science, technologies, engineering

and mathematics knowledge and skills to design and create a realistic solution.

In today’s current climate, it is getting more difficult for young Australians to be

creative due to the influence of social media, gaming and the internet in general,

therefore units such as this that incorporate STEM also provide students with the

opportunity to be creative and think outside the box which is often not an option in

other subjects or even in life. In addition, implementing the UN goals into a STEM unit

is extremely beneficial for students as they are educated on real and current issues

that need solutions immediately. Exposing students to such intense and real issues

such as ocean pollution will open a door for them to have an authentic understanding

of the world and are motivated to solve the problem for example, creating machines

that will clean up the oil, which will require students to apply their STEM skills and

knowledge.