Harbor School STEM Lab and Soft Skills

Communication Building

?Whether sharing ideas or findings or explaining topics, the ability to get their message across effectively is vital for students. STEM lessons ask students to communicate through their own creativity by building, designing and problem solving through technology.

Collaboration Activities

?In STEM-based lessons, students continue to work with their classmates towards a common goal. Every student is involved and engaged, so no one is left behind. Collaborative activities allow each student to contribute and shine. Students practice working as a team, listening to one another, and seeing each other’s point of view. When the entire class accomplishes a task, everyone celebrates their success.

Development of Critical Thinking

STEM lessons also require students to use analytical and critical-thinking skills to look for patterns, make predictions in ways that they might not have used before. Students learn to make decisions not just based on what they think or feel, but by creating and inventing based on their interests. This outlet allows them another avenue to display their strengths and think critically about a wide number of topics.

Problem-Solving

Sometimes, solving a problem requires looking at it from a different perspective. In the STEM Lab, students practice and nurture this skill by working on open-ended assignments. In these scenarios, there may be multiple ways to solve the problem successfully, and students use their creativity to come up with their own solutions. 

Informational Literacy

Not all information sources are equal: some are authoritative and reliable, but some can provide false information. Information literacy is the ability to identify what information is needed, understand how the information is organized, identify the best sources of information for a given need, locate those sources, and evaluate those sources critically. STEM lessons challenge students to separate verifiable facts from fiction.

Adaptability by Understanding Failures to Success

TEM lessons help students embrace the idea that it’s OK to fail multiple times before they succeed, or that there is no right or wrong answer all along. It’s like a game where students can restart and try again as many times as they need to be successful.