At Washington High School, we create and foster opportunities for students to  engage collaboratively in authentic inquiry in their classes. As our STEM program has grown to be school inclusive, it has been our philosophy that Washington High  educators teach students to work together collaboratively and find solutions all while being innovative. We have also had students engage in a variety of STEM challenges to create opportunities for classroom teachers to provide an environment and a tool where students can solve a complex problem and address everyday challenges in creative ways. These STEM challenges have been occurred within various individual classrooms but also have been hosted by our various business and industry partners. Teachers also have the autonomy to create mini project/problem based learning activities to ensure students are consistently exposed to a new way of seeing and operating in the world. As a design thinker students practice human-centered observation, critical research and analysis, innovation, and experimentation. Student work is also conducted using the Engineering Design Process as well as the Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning protocol as they design and create solutions to problems. The Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER) is a writing strategy that can develop a student’s analytical thinking and argumentative writing skills to turn that “I don’t know” into “aha, so that’s why we got those results in the lab.” Inquiry learning also allows students to refine their thoughts and thinking. They receive guidance and support from their teachers. Teacher also model inquiry learning with the students and as they have discussions that allow students to critique one another’s work for improvement.

 

 

Opportunities for Growth

Because numeracy and literacy are a focal point at our school, we want to look for ways to scaffold our STEM engagement for students instructionally. We recognize we have some struggling learners that could most benefit from having more directed and guided inquiry models. This directed inquiry can provide our lower-level students with a foundation to learn and practice inquiry. Once they master this, we can then transition to a more guided inquiry model in which students have another opportunity to practice skills of inquiry with independence and they are encouraged to think of multiples scenarios and helps foster and improve student confidence.