As a Country, the United States is continually falling behind academically when compared to other Nations. Therefore, the purpose of my Honors Thesis is to enlighten others on the importance of incorporating science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) into our classrooms. When students have the chance to partake in hands on, inquiry based lessons, their new knowledge for the subject increases drastically. However, completing STEM lessons in the classroom is a challenging task. For this reason, I have designed a unit's worth of lesson plans, where the unit encompasses science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. These STEM lessons are inquiry-based so that students get an understanding that science is a learning process, not just a group of facts to be memorized. The lessons are written in the 5E format, as this format is based on the way human beings learn. I wanted to make this as easy as possible for teachers to bring inquiry-based STEM learning into the classroom. When students are allowed to take control of their own learning and make discoveries for themselves, they are going to realize the excitement that comes with STEM. This will lead more students to pursue STEM careers, thus helping bring the United States back to a competitive level academically.

Meteorology is an uncommon term rarely resonating through elementary classrooms. However, it is a concept found in both fourth and sixth grade Arizona science standards. As issues involving the environment are becoming more pertinent, it is important to study and understand atmospheric processes along with fulfilling the standards for each grade level. This thesis project teaches the practical skills of weather map reading and weather forecasting through the creation and execution of an after school lesson with the aide of seven teen assistants.

Experiential learning is the process of gaining new information by participating in some sort of experience. One way this can occur inside the classroom, as in the inquiry model or problem-based learning. It can also occur outside of the classroom, as in outdoor education or field trips. Recently, virtual experiential learning opportunities have surfaced, including virtual field trips, experiments, and manipulatives. This project aims to define experiential learning, including examples in every context. Then, it describes current elementary school teachers' perceptions of experiential learning via survey results. The final product also includes an Appendix which is made up of experiential learning lesson plans for each context.

The specific focus of the curriculum guide is to encourage inquiry and exploration of sustainability with middle school students. Children need to be explicitly taught how to analyze findings, how to work together, and teachers need to begin to lay the foundation of finding ideal solutions that best serve all people. The sooner that we introduce our students to these concepts in conjunction with science concepts the better prepared they will be to face the upcoming challenges and the better developed their scientific literacy.

There is still a major underrepresentation of females in STEM fields, with many girls beginning to lose interest as early as middle school. This is due to a variety of factors including lack of role models, stereotypes, ineffective teaching methods, and peer influence. A popular way to increase female interest is through day camps and other programs where girls complete a variety of activities related to science and engineering. These activities are usually designed around problem-based learning, a student-lead approach to teaching that requires students to work collaboratively and use background knowledge to solve some sort of given problem. In this project, a day camp for middle school girls was created and implemented to increase student interest in STEM through three problem-based learning activities. By analyzing survey data, it was concluded that the camp was successful in increasing interest and changing participants' attitudes towards science. This approach to learning could be applied to other subject areas, including mathematics, to increase the interest of both male and female students at the secondary level.