Get Started

The STEMarts Curriculum Tool was created to deepen the student's learning experience by providing a pre-festival resource built around the work of PASEO artists selected for the STEMarts@PASEO Youth Program. It provides STEAM activities, resources and science standard alignments on each visiting artist who inspired students with a behind the scenes talk and demo to share their work and process. The Get Started page is designed to provide some guidelines on how to create unique artist-focused STEAM activities for your classroom using the STEMarts Curriculum tool

Here are some guidelines to get you started:

1. Teacher Explore. Explore the site to become familiar with all the tools and guidelines available to you and your students. The goal of the project is create a meaningful learning experience around the selected PASEO artists and their work.

2. Student Connections. Have your students review the Artist Pages to discover the variety of work represented. Discuss as a class how each artist process is similar or different and how science and technology is incorporated in the work. Have them explore the pages individually to encourage personal reflection and critical thinking. We created activity guides under the Teacher Tools section to facilitate this process and to provide prompts that help make connections between the artists themes, genres and medium.

3. Hands-on STEAM Activity. Review the STEMarts Design Tool for the selected artist. The Design Tool includes a STEAM wiki with links to hands-on science and art activities and research focusing on the artist's theme and technique. Choose an activity to try out with students so that the students have a hands-on experience of the artist's work or process before they visit the school.

4. Teacher and Student Surveys. Once the project is complete and after the festival, you can fill out the surveys to give us feedback on what worked and what did not. Help us improve!

Curriculum Components

The curriculum tool has several components to make the STEAM exploration easy and fun. The Artist Page is the heart of the curriculum. All of the content revolves around the Paseo artist and their work. Each Artist Page provides access to the Standards, Teacher Tools, STEAM wikis and the STEMarts DesignTool. Below is a brief description for each component.

Artist Page

The Artist Page is designed to highlight the Paseo artist and how their work integrates STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math) concepts. Each page contains; photos and a description of the installation that will be presented at the festival; An artist bio and history of past work through videos, articles and interviews; A STEAM wiki which is a collection of links to DIY activities and science research related to the artist's work, inspirational articles or videos, tutorials, and information about the technology related to the artists work; The STEMarts Design Tool which takes students through the design process of a STEAM activity. The Artist Page also provides a Quick Tools section with direct access to STEMarts Design Tool, STEAM wiki, and Teacher Tools.

STEMarts DesignTool

The Stemarts Design Tool provides students with a step-by-step tool to help them come up with a design concept for an installation or sculpture inspired by the work of a Paseo artist. Students explore the artist's work and theme so that they have a deeper understanding of the work before meeting the artist. They research the science and technology behind the art and experiment with the related hands-on activities and tools provided in the STEAM wiki to better understand the artist techniques and process. Finally they brainstorm with peers to come up with ideas and create an Installation Design Concept in the form of a drawing created by hand or with a computer to hang in the school- a napkin sketch. This tool takes the student through each stage of the design process.

STEAM wikis

The STEAM wiki can be found under the STEMarts Design Tool for each Artist Page. There is an open source wiki for each Paseo artist with resources specific to that artist's work. Students will find links with inspirations, research material, STEAM activities and 21st-century tools and tips in the form of articles, images, video clips, and tutorials. Each wiki link has a brief introduction describing the content of the link. Because this is open source it’s important to ask students to consider the quality of information, the source and if it is effective e.g. were the instructions easy to understand and did it work? Learning to assess information critically and being able to apply what is learned is an important 21st-century skill.

Standards

The Standards page can be accessed from the main menu. It provides standard alignments to the Next Generation Science Standards and the Partnership for 21st Century Standards. You can also access the Standards page directly from the Artist Pages which include an additional standard alignment that is specific to that artist's work. These standards can be used to align this Paseo classroom project to your school curriculum, or just to inspire and inform content and strategies for your lesson plan.

Teacher Tools

The Teacher Tools can be accessed from the individual artist pages or from the footer and include activity guides that provide additional resources and tips to help integrate this activity into your curriculum and to develops critical thinking around the artist's process, medium and technique. This section can also include student and teacher surveys designed to help assess the impact of the STEMarts@Paseo Curriculum Tool as a school activity, as well as specific student learning outcomes. We hope that you will participate in these surveys. Your answers and insights will improve the curriculum tool and provide useful information for your parents and your school.