STEAM Newsletter – Introduce a Girl to Engineering!
February 15, 2022
Welcome to this month’s installment of our STEAM Newsletter! This February, we are celebrating Black History Month, Engineer Week – Reimagining the Possible (February 20-26), and Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day (February 24)!
As part of the collective vision, CAN and all of Million Girl Moonshot partners recommit to a year-round effort of cultivating an engineering mindset in girls and youth traditionally underrepresented in STEM fields. To do so this month, we are sharing many resources surrounding role models in this field of STEM, as well as other activities and opportunities that you can share in your programs.
To learn more about Million Girls Moonshot and their vision, you can visit their website.
In This Newsletter:
Celebrating Engineer Week!
February 20 - 26, 2022
Celebrate Engineer Week (#EWeek) with us this February! Explore these resources on how you can celebrate with us:
- Educators Planning Guide – Spark girls’ interest in engineering in classrooms, afterschool programs, and other group settings.
- Engineers / Volunteers Planning Guide – Inspire a girl’s future by sharing with her what engineering is all about.
- Parents Planning Guide – Learn how you can introduce your child to engineering.
Equity & Inclusion
- Toolkit: EngineerGirl – EngineerGirl collects stories, profiles, and resources on topics that showcase how engineers shape the future through innovative solutions to problems. These collections continue to grow and change over time.
- Toolkit: Math Equity Toolkit – This tool kit layers professional development into “Strides” that educators can take along a path to equitable education. Topics include Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction and Creating Conditions to Thrive.
Engineering Mindsets
- Activity Toolkit: Growing Math – Provides ready-to-roll-out lessons and games combining math, agricultural science and Indigenous history and culture that can be easily used in classrooms, via hybrid models or through distance learning. The project will provide resources, curriculum, training and tech support to teachers and students in Grades 3-8 at schools in six states: Arizona, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon and South Dakota. For schools in the region, all participation and resources are supported through USDA funds.
- Professional Development Guide: The National Center for Quality Afterschool – Math in Afterschool – The National Partnership for Quality Afterschool Learning developed professional development guides for four content areas of the toolkit: literacy, math, technology, and the arts.
Incorporating Role Models
Black History Month, Engineer's Week, and National Heart Month
The following assets are free profile videos and photos of IF/THEN Ambassadors.
For Black History Month and Engineer’s Week
- Long Profile of Aisha Lawrey
- Social Media Cutdown of Aisha Lawrey
- Mission Unstoppable Episode of Aisha Lawrey
STEM Transitions, Handoffs, and Coordination
- Toolkit: Brokering Youth Pathways: A Toolkit for Connecting Youth to Future Opportunity from the Hive Research Network – This toolkit shares ways in which various out-of-school educators and professionals have approached the challenge of brokering. We provide a framework, practice briefs and reports that focus on a particular issue or challenge and provide concrete examples, as well as illustrate how our partners worked through designing new brokering routines in partnership with our research team.
Girls Who Code Virtual Summer Program
Priority Deadline: February 16, 2022; Regular Deadline: March 18, 2022
Join Girls Who Code’s free virtual summer programs, and get the skills and support you need to step into the 500,000+ open computing jobs across the country!
Their 2-week Summer Immersion Program (SIP) hosts current 9th-11th graders in live virtual classrooms led by industry-leading companies like EA, Pfizer, and ViacomCBS. Students learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript while getting an inside look into the tech industry. Plus, SIP students can apply for grants up to $500!
Join the Moonshot Flight Crew!
Application Deadline: February 25, 2022
The Million Girls Moonshot is launching its inaugural Flight Crew!
The Flight Crew is a cohort of youth advocates, ages 13-18, who are committed to creating equity for girls in STEM through elevating youth voices and inspiring future STEM leaders. Million Girls Moonshot is looking for young scientists, engineers, inventors, builders, and leaders who have been inspired by their experience outside of the school classroom.
Technovation Parent Workshop: The Engineering Design Process at Home
Friday, April 1, 2022; 6:00 - 7:00 PM PST
Join Technovation for their upcoming parent workshop: The Engineering Design Process at Home.
Life is messy and your child doesn’t always deal with clear-cut problems. Join Technovation to learn about the Engineering Design Process and how this framework can help anybody approach all sorts of complex problems both within STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) and out. In this session we will focus on the different steps of the Engineering Design Process, including iteration and developing resistance to failure in STEM.
Parent & Family Resources
- Website: Math Communities – Students, parents, and educators coming together to play with math! Math Communities creates a virtual community that provides free access to joyful collaborative activities designed by professional mathematicians and math educators for K-12 students, educators, and families. There are lots of ways to communicate with other folks interested in math.
- Toolkit: Engaging Families in Mathematics Education - Families are a child’s first educator and this role does not halt on day one of school. Families lay the foundation for future educational success. Researchers have identified four best practices for engaging families effectively in mathematics education.
Activities for Programs
Incorporate these activities into your programs today!
- Activity Toolkit: Engineering is Elementary’s NASA Partnership free units – A suite of free NASA-funded STEM resources for students in grades 3-8. All resources are research-based and classroom-tested. They are designed to support students’ understanding of space, while helping them see themselves as capable problem solvers.
- Activity Toolkit: STEM Educators Academy Activity Toolkit from ExpandED Schools — This Activity Toolkit offers hybrid learning engineering design challenges, STEM facilitation skill builder videos, and engineering design activities categorized by content areas.
Mizzen by Mott
The Mizzen By Mott app delivers inspiring and engaging activities that spark learning in young people. Supported by the Mott Foundation, Mizzen is available at no cost to afterschool professionals! Encourage partners to download the Mizzen By Mott app to access STEM activities at your finger-touch!
Featured Activities & Playlists
- Playlist: STEM Activities for K-5th Grade in Small Groups – This playlist is a great mix of engineering and science activities that are easy and fun for small groups of students.
- Playlist: Science Notebooks for 3rd – 12th Grade – Keeping a notebook can help your students think and act like scientists and engineers. Sample these easy-to-implement strategies and lessons to bring science notebooking into your program.
- Module: S.INQ Up Earth and Space for 6-8th Grade – Earth and Space is an inquiry and exploration-based curriculum that uses hands-on activities focused on the relationships between the earth, the solar system, and human impacts on our global environment.
Check Out CAN’s Other Newsletters!
Access the CAN newsletter archives to view past newsletters today! You may be interested in some of our other newsletters as well: