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PROGRAM PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT * 1 HOUR * LEVEL 2

STEM in the Early Childhood Program
What is STEM?

Page 3
The STEM craze is sweeping the nation’s classrooms, but it is much more than a passing fad within the educational community. STEM (curriculum focusing on science, technology, engineering, and math) focused classrooms intertwine the subjects of STEM curriculum with other disciplines such as literacy and art. The goal of STEM instruction is to give students the tools to understand and explore the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and math. Ideally, this familiarization and understanding of STEM elements will lead to careers in STEM-related fields. Even if this ideal goal is not realized, having students become comfortable and more knowledgeable with science, technology, engineering, and math concepts will benefit them and the world that they are a part of greatly.

Many school-age teachers and classrooms have an existing STEM curriculum that aims to teach children the fundamentals of science, technology, and math, but early childhood classrooms tend to shift their focus away from STEM. A typical early childhood classroom will focus on social, emotional and foundational skills such as early literacy and early math concepts. These are very important early childhood skills to teach and can be developed further when combined with STEM concepts. This has the potential to create a very well-rounded approach to learning certain concepts.