Engaging Family and Community
- Here are a few suggestions for connecting with families and community members:
- Download, print, and send the Family Fliers home with your learners.
- Connect learners and their families with the STEM Learners webpage for this unit.
- Invite a guest speaker to share community and/or cultural knowledge on the unit topic.
- Use this question as a starting point for the guest speaker: “How has a big new discovery impacted your life?”
- Invite a guest speaker to share community and/or cultural knowledge on the unit topic.
Have beginning, middle, and end meetings with families while doing the unit.
- At the first meeting, discuss with families what they would like to share and what they would like to learn. Set some ground rules for how to interact with each other.
- At the mid-unit meeting, have families choose from the list of questions on the family fliers and pick one or two to share stories about.
- At the Share-Out, make time for learners to share their creations and encourage families to go deeper and share any more details, stories, or concepts that the learning progress sparks for them.
Translatable Glossaries
In order to scaffold learners’ language development during these activities, please use these editable files as needed to support students’ language captured on the Our Ideas poster and in their student notebook.
To support their language development, you can include translations and/or images that your learners will relate to. If you are fluent in your learner’s languages, you can write the translations yourself. If you are not, consider asking a family or community member to help you. There also may be online dictionaries for your learner’s languages like these for American Sign Language: https://atomichands.com/asl-stem-dictionaries/ or https://enablenavajo.org/dine/ for Navajo.
Remember that vocabulary is not intended to be “front-loaded” for learners, but rather it develops as they engage in the activities. To support this development, be sure to leave room for learners to add their own drawings and notes under the words to help them articulate and remember their meanings.”
Science Questions
Send learners home with questions for their families and have them bring answers back to the program. Suggested questions are listed below.
Use these questions for each adventure. If you have extra time, you can start each adventure with a discussion of what they learned at home and end each adventure with a reminder of the next adventure’s question.
Can you tell a story about…
…how you use science and engineering to avoid hazards at home? (Science Adventure 1)
…a hazard you have experienced and how you mitigated it? (Science Adventure 2)
…a time when you mitigated a hazard in your neighborhood? (Science Adventure 3)
…a problem you have faced that is similar to a hazard in space? (Science Adventure 4)
…a time you shared your ideas with a community before? (Science Adventure 5)
…something in the night sky? (Science Adventure 6)
Engineering Questions
Use these questions for each adventure. If you have extra time, you can start each adventure with a discussion of what they learned at home and end each adventure with a reminder of the next adventure’s question.
Can you tell a story about…
…a technology or tool that made a big difference in your life? (Engineering Adventure 1)
…a time when you solved a mystery? (Engineering Adventure 2)
…a time when using a tool made something way easier? (Engineering Adventure 3)
…something creative you did to keep when when it got really cold? (Engineering Adventure 4)
…something creative you did to keep from getting hurt? (Engineering Adventure 5)
…something creative you did to keep your clothes clean? (Engineering Adventure 6)
…build something to solve several problems at the same time? (Engineering Adventure 7)
…something that you built that didn’t work as well as you hoped? What did you do to improve it? (Engineering Adventure 8) …a time when you shared something you built or created with others? (Engineering Adventure 9)
