I think it can be difficult to determine whether a task is worthwhile or not. In my mind, having students preform a task will teach them something regardless of if it is the intended idea you wanted to teach. Does this mean the task isn't worthwhile? I believe implementing the task first and having students struggle is more than worthwhile. It uses a constructivist approach for students to build their own knowledge about the given task and after their initial struggle, with a little guidance, the students will hopefully understand the purpose of the task. I think this is one important aspect of worthwhile tasks, ensuring that in the end, the students understand the purpose of the task and how it relates to the content they are focusing on. Another aspect of a worthwhile task I think is critical to have is ensuring that the task connects relevant ideas from student backgrounds to make the tasks more personal and appealing to the students. If the students can't relate to anything in the task they might be less likely to engage. Lastly, I believe the other critical component of a worthwhile task is, as I touched on slightly above, to ensure that it forces students to think critically about the content or how to find a solution. That is a huge focus on STEM content. Student's ability to approach a task critically and view multiple perspectives to a solution is so valuable to their development.
Worthwhile STEM Tasks Checklist:
- Ensure students have opportunity to struggle but also provide guidance to keep student thought moving in the intended direction
- Relate the task to student interests or background to increase engagement
- Ensure the task allows students to think critically and have multiple perspectives
One task that I would have students preform is similar to the above image. I would like to have students bring in candy and I would encourage students bring candy from different cultures that students maybe grew up eating! I would have them create some type of model to represent a cell. I had many biology teachers at the beginning of the class have students draw a picture of a cell and label its parts to get students to remember cell structure and components. I think having students create a model with candy is a fun and engaging way for students to get the same ideas out of an originally boring task. It would force students to think about how to represent different organelles as different candy pieces and there would be so many different models to look at. In the end, I would hopefully, depending on what the next lesson would be, have students try to use these models to depict a cellular process such as cellular respiration. I would have them move the candy pieces and explain step by step the parts of the process with the candy pieces just to see what students know and engage them even further with ideas we will be using in the near future.