Giving Compass' Take:

• To foster learning in STEM subjects, Education Dive explains how one teacher from Austin, Texas, used an indoor wind tunnel to engage her students' curiosity in activities surrounding motion, flight and velocity.

• How can other types of field trips inspire kids? What are the best ways to apply these real-world experiences in the classroom?

• Here's why our school system often falls short when it comes to providing these opportunities.

Amy Jo Martinez’s 5th-graders were more than willing to sell scented pencils to raise funds for its iFly field trip each spring. The trip — where children get to skydive in an indoor wind tunnel — coincided with the math and science curriculum Martinez taught on velocity, force and motion.

Students spent most of the school year running experiments, including building cardboard rockets and attaching helium balloons to see how they impacted the motion of the rocket. By the time they went on the iFly trip, students had what Martinez called “aha moments,” where they could watch what they learned in class happening in real time before their eyes.

“As a teacher, yes, I have to hit standards, but I want [my students] to love education, I want them to enjoy learning,” Martinez, now instructional coach at Cedars International Academy, a pre-K through 7th-grade school in Austin, Texas, told Education Dive. “And I found this helped them connect science and math to the real world.”

Linking real-world learning to what students study in the classroom is often where they have, as Martinez said, aha moments. Children see what they’ve studied in action, alongside the impact on the larger world around them.

Read the full article about real-world experiences fostering STEM learning by Lauren Barack at Education Dive.