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Mentor texts are utilized to build background knowledge and guide students to real-world problems within STEAM content areas. For instance, Dan Santat's book, After The Fall, How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again, teaches perseverance and growth mindset while exploring design and modifications for a paper airplane. Students can incorporate both the social curriculum with STEAM concepts while they create airplanes in their STEAM bins. One of the many exciting concepts of mentor texts and STEAM is the endless possibilities. Students can also design Egg Drop experiments and persevere through their creations. Another phenomenal mentor text is Andrea Beaty's Iggy Peck Architect. Bringing this book into the classroom will strengthen the students' understanding of cross-curricular content, as they study this book in Art class, as well as their ability to be resourceful in STEAM creations. Bridging curriculum and intertwining social-emotional experiences with hands-on STEAM exposure is cultivating and nurturing a child's innate ability to discover and problem solve. With an overabundance of digital technology at children's disposal, students need more opportunities to create and discover with every day classroom items and their own two hands, now more than ever. STEAMbins are simple pencil boxes or mesh pencil bags that hold the targeted materials for the STEAM exploration guided by the mentor text. For instance, with After The Fall, How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again, students would receive their STEAMbins with either bowls, cotton balls, and scrapes of paper to design Egg Drops, or sheets of paper and index cards to design the airplanes. With Beaty's Iggy Peck Architect, students will receive fruit snacks and toothpicks to design 3D architecture. Powerful mentor texts, coupled with simple STEAMbins allow students to experience integrated curriculum and foster their innate ability to design, create, modify, and reflect on their STEAM creations.
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