Learning everywhere: The nature of the building means that students can utilise all the spaces to find the best place to design, implement and test their creations while working as teams to learn with and from each other.
purposeful ways that relate to real-world scenarios. To meet this challenge, Ms
Hasfjord engaged stakeholders in a comprehensive and phased process during her two years at the School. Listening and Learning was the first phase and consisted of focus groups for all stakeholders including parents, students, staff and Board members. Classroom visits created a better understanding of the culture of the School and teaching styles, while digital surveys collected feedback from the School community. From the Listening and Learning phase, a set of Design Principles, specific to BHS, emerged. These ensure that: STEAM opportunities are inclusive of all students and year levels; STEAM programming meets BHS’s standards and reputation for student success at the university level and beyond; learning is based around the principles of transdisciplinary and inquiry-based teaching and; learning is connected to the local and international community. Ms Hasfjord said that while some of these principles will be found in all
STEAM-based curricula, each school will have unique aspects on which they wish to focus.
“For example, we don’t always put in this idea of success at the university level and beyond. That’s hugely important here at BHS,” she said. With the Design Principles in place, the Implementation Phase followed. For teachers and staff, this meant ongoing professional development that Ms Hasfjord said was, “more than regular professional development and required a real commitment from the staff.”
Meanwhile, Primary students have been engaged in interdisciplinary units of study while Secondary students have taken part in problem-based learning that involved multiple subject areas. Coding and robotics have now been implemented for all year levels in Primary and Computer Science is required for all Y7 and Y8 students. The schedule was also adjusted to
allow transdisciplinary learning which is a hallmark of STEAM. “For Year 7s and 8s, we created common planning time for the Science
and Maths teachers to design integrated units,” said Ms Hasfjord. “One project was to design gardens for Bermuda that are conscious of the constraints of Bermuda like limited space, the weather, etc. The students ended up creating a lab report in Science from the data they analysed in Maths.”
Assessments or tests can also be combined so that students receive one assessment across multiple disciplines. Commenting on the changes and new initiatives that have come with the STEAM strategy, Head of Secondary, Catherine Hollingsworth, expressed her excitement for what lies ahead: “We’re all working towards the idea that STEAM, or Innovation, is about developing skills and applying them to real-world situations. We’re developing a curriculum where students are not taught in silos, because you’ll never do that in the workplace. “It’s more about the connections in
the different subject areas and how we can bring that learning together to produce a piece of work that shows what has been learned across several different areas.”
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