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STEM - STEM Champion

The keys to making STEM sySTEMic across your school.

About the Course

STEM is an exciting priority area of the Department of Education & Skills. Are you ready and prepared to effectively take on the STEM challenge in the coming year?

From this coming September, STEM will infuse more and more classroom lessons across Ireland’s primary schools, determining how lessons are configured and integrated, written up and organised, delivered and mediated. We have got to make STEM fun and expose our students to hands-on, real world and creative activities for them to become engaged, motivated and truly successful learners, ready to better play, learn and work in an ever more STEM infused world.

STEM is all about inspiring our next generation of inventors, innovators and leaders to:

  • Question like a scientist
  • Design like a technologist
  • Build like an engineer
  • Create like an artist
  • Deduce like a mathematician
  • Play just like a kid!

……………… having great fun in the process, deepening learning without even knowing it. STEM is addictive for children.


We need to start them young and the Department of Education recognises this fact. Through this course, we equip you with the full spectrum of understandings, insight and skill to deliver a STEM orientated / infused curriculum, comprising the ideas and activities to stimulate your children’s interest in these fascinating subjects.

When we as a minimum create tasks and challenges that interweave at least 2 of the 4 pillars from the STEM acronym, then you have a STEM orientated lesson. Additionally, we present you with ready to go lessons, tasks and challenges such as:

  • Building bridges, bird feeders or biodomes
  • Engineer jet cars, planes and gliders
  • Exploring wind and weather 
  • Change trash to treasure, design high tech games and code programs
  • Get down on the floor with programmable Bee-Bots or programme their counterparts on-screen
  • Build raised veggie beds, plant up school grounds containers, take a census of ‘the school yard zoo’, build insect hotels and so much more

We provide a suite of great stem activities to get your STEM programme off to a roaring, addictive start, thereafter equipping you with the knowledge and skills to take it cosmic and create your own. 

See the full list of projects that we have included in the course here.

Remember, the skills required of tomorrow are not those of yesteryear or even today. Our children are destined to work in jobs that do not yet exist! Jobs in the area of artificial intelligence, smart home technologies, driverless vehicles, to name just three.

Therefore;“Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.” Ravindranath Tagore

The students we are teaching today are going to be joining a very different workforce. The inclusion of STEM in our classrooms is a fantastic place to start!

NOTE:

The online format of this course enables you to study at a time and place that best suits your own needs. 

You can access your course anytime until March 31st 2024.

Within this highly interactive web based course, a dynamic learning experience awaits, where you can interact with your fellow course participants through the in-course chat forums and communication tools provided by the CPD College learning system. 

Our friendly and knowledgeable tutors actively support each course, providing expert interaction, guidance and feedback for all participants on chat questions and assignments which call for critical reflection, self-analysis and a reasoned response. 

On successful completion of your course, you can download and print off your CPD record and certificate of completion.

We look forward to welcoming you to your course.

Learning outcomes

This course aims to:

  • Provide the rationale, case and context for a STEM approach to 21st Century primary education
  • Equip teachers with a full working understanding of all aspects of STEM in education, incorporated in through an integrative approach
  • Equip teachers with not just the knowledge and understanding, but insight, skill & enthusiasm to create more STEM rich lessons
  • Provide a large selection of STEM projects to review for approaches, tips and practice points
  • Inspire teachers to go forth, implement and champion a STEM rich curriculum
  • Look at, review and score one’s own ‘teacher practice’ as part of the SSE process
Modules
01 - Exploring STEM: The meaning of STEM, its background and its benefits for teaching and learning. The STEM skills deficit and how we can address it in our classrooms. A selection of STEM projects. 
02 - STEM knowledge and skills: Utilising a STEM approach to develop knowledge and skills across content areas. Essential STEM teaching practices, maker spaces and using STEM to drive creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication.  A selection of STEM projects. 
03 - STEM lessons and teamwork: The process for designing STEM lessons and how to effectively integrate teamwork into the process. Reviewing lessons from STEM potential and integrating project based learning.  A selection of STEM projects. 
04 - Exploring technology: The 'T' in STEM under the microscope. Computational thinking, coding and how they can be taught in the primary school classroom. A selection of STEM projects.
05 - Robotics and STEM. Learning with robots and integration across content. Arranging STEM events in school and becoming the STEM champion. A selection of STEM projects. 

"I thoroughly enjoyed the course. Great practical ideas are provided in all five modules. I am really looking forward to launching STEM in our school."  Olive, 2022