**3.1 STEM curriculum development methodology**

STEM lesson plans help students make connections between their theoretical knowledge and the real world through collaborative problem solving. One of the main objectives of STEM curriculum is to prepare our children for the challenges of today and tomorrow. These challenges, whether local, national or global, have to be identified and tied with the core curriculum concepts. STEM lesson plans also provide an opportunity to address gaps in the curriculum.

It is needless to say that not all concepts can be covered through STEM during an academic year given time and resource constraints. A carefully designed selection process covering ten to twelve crosscutting topics in an academic year through well-designed comprehensive lesson plans can achieve the desired learning outcomes.

The process of topic selection is influenced by many factors. These mainly include the national curriculum standards, problems affecting the population, desired literacies and skills, students' interest, and topics that lend well to hands-on activities. The topics identified and selected through this process may be called Key Curriculum Concepts (KCCs) as shown in **Figure 2**.

One of the first challenges that a STEM lesson plan has to address is to invite and engage students in a manner that piques their interest and gets them sufficiently motivated to get their creative juices flowing. The relevance and authenticity of the topic, the method of introduction to the topic, whether in the form of a question, a story or a presentation, verbal or with the help of audio-visuals, sets up the stage for the level of engagement and immersive experience that the children are going to have.

**Figure 2.** *Selection of key curriculum concepts for STEM lesson plans.*

### *STEM Integration in Resource Constrained Environments DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113066*

Similarly, the hands-on activities for the lesson plans are designed in the context of learners' needs and abilities making sure that they are in the Zone of Proximal Development, i.e. neither too easy nor too difficult but just the right amount of difficulty level to enable them to construct new knowledge autonomously through self-discovery with minimum scaffolding from teachers. This helps students develop industry and agency.

The lesson plans may typically be accompanied with worksheets that provide students the opportunity to practice and demonstrate their learning. Instead of simple question-and-answer (Q&A), the worksheets incorporate a variety of methods to assess whether the outcomes of lesson plans have been effectively achieved and identify areas that need further attention.

Finally, following the principles of assessment for learning, rubrics are created for formative assessments. This includes both teacher review and peer review by students. Since students are provided with multiple opportunities to express themselves during the course of a STEM lesson plan, starting from the introduction to the topic to the final presentation by students of their projects, it provides teachers and students ample opportunities to observe, capture and review their performances. The formative assessment also creates opportunities for teachers to apply differentiated learning to ensure an equitable learning environment.
