STEAM activities that are connected to Literature

There has been a big push in teaching STEAM and connecting the content areas of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. But what about language arts? Is language being overlooked?

Connecting STEAM and language arts does not have to be extremely complicated; it can be as simple as connecting a book to the lesson or having the students write about their learning experience in a journal. One way to do this is to base a STEAM lesson around a book, if you read the three little pigs to students you could challenge them to build a house. The students would be using the information they learned from the story about how a house needs to be stable, and use the given material to build a house. Once the students have built their house they can test to see if it stays standing in wind from a fan. If the house does not stand you can talk to the students about trial and error and have the students problem solve to see what they can do to improve the house. Depending on the grade level and abilities of the students completing the STEAM challenge, you could have the students begin to learn about recording their thoughts and ideas by drawing blueprints and using sentence stems to tell the process of how they built the house.


Another literacy and STEAM activity that you could do that is also connected to history is learning about the underground railroad. There are several books about the underground railroad that you could choose from to use as a read-aloud. After reading the book you could talk with your students about freedom quilts and they could create their own quilt design, you could review the maps and go over distances and have the students choose which route they think is the safest and write about their reasoning.

There are so many ways to connect literacy to STEAM activities. Start small. Start by picking out a book for a read-aloud and have the activity connected to the read-aloud be STEAM related. It does not have to be some elaborate project. Here is an Amazon Wishlist that has some great resources and books to use when creating a STEAM lesson that incorporates literacy.