Incorporating STEM
Are you having trouble incorporating STEM into your daily routine? Do you wish you could find a way to be successful with the current STEM initiatives? If you’re like many teachers, you probably find that including STEM activities in your day is sometimes a challenging and frustrating task. You want to meet the Next Generation Science Standards and STEM initiatives with fun, hands-on activities that support science, technology, engineering, and math and be successful at integrating these subject areas into your day! The question is how do you do that?
First, let’s talk about motivating students to come alive with ideas, work together cooperatively, learn about new things, show what they already know, and have fun with science, technology, engineering, and math! That’s a big order, right?
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Motivating Ideas
As we all know, motivation to learn is very important in every classroom. And what gets kids, motivated? Hands-on activities where students make decisions about their learning are highly successful in this respect. Getting students engaged in tasks gives them responsibility for their learning. It’s always good to hear, “That activity was so much fun!” They often don’t even know that they are learning.
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Working Cooperatively
You can include activities for students to demonstrate social emotional growth by working in cooperative groups on integrated STEM projects. Learning to plan and work with others is a crucial part of the scientific inquiry process.
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Learning New Things
Your students are always eager to learn about new and exciting things: new science information, new technology, new engineering practices, and new math strategies; and how they all work together to build our world. Just watch their eyes light up as you introduce new concepts.
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Show What They Know
Give your students encouragement to share what they already know about classroom lessons. As new concepts are introduced, be sure to ask what they already know about the subject. You may be surprised to find certain students have specific interests that open up all sorts of opportunities for partner, small group, peer group, and student taught lessons.
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Have Fun
Make your classroom the place where learning is fun, exciting, and challenging. Provide your students with opportunities to put their hands on materials to demonstrate their knowledge and explore their world.
So How Do You Do All Of Those Things?
As a teacher, it’s obvious that you are always looking for ways to incorporate motivating techniques. What can I pull together for my classroom? What’s out there that I can purchase to meet my needs for my school’s STEM initiatives? A new hands-on kit available from Really Good Stuff may be the answer to your concerns. It’s a great way to incorporate STEM into your daily routine. The STEM Meets 100 Kit includes activities that support Common Core counting to 100 standards and Next Generation State Standards Core Ideas all in one hands-on kit. Its versatility makes it the perfect way to enhance your 100th day celebration, engage your students and parents on a STEM night, or reinforce counting to 100 by ones, fives, and tens any day of the year.
Rotate Through 4 Stations
You’ll find that each station encourages cooperative learning and includes fun activities to support your classroom lessons:
1. The Filling Station
Counting to 100, subtraction, measurement, estimating, shapes, and using digital media! That’s a lot of skills all tied up in one activity!
2. Bug-Out Sort
Counting to 100, adding, categorizing, estimating, measuring, sorting by attributes, and using digital media! Plus, you can expand this activity with discussions about bugs and their characteristics.
3. Build-It Buddies
Counting to 100, building/engineering, constructing, measuring, comparing, and using digital media! Just how tall can a 100 pipe-cleaner building soar? We’ll find out!
4. Button It Up
Counting to 100, sorting, categorizing, looking at attributes, predicting, and sinking & floating! What better way to hone those identifying, predicting, and testing predictions skills?
Sharing, Comparing, and Assessing!
You can rely on the STEM Meets 100 Journals to get students planning, reading, writing, recording information, sharing, comparing their findings, and using the scientific inquiry process. All a big part of the Common Core State Standards, Next Generation State Standards Core Ideas, and STEM initiatives. And for you, the completed journals are a great assessment tool for checking student understanding of important concepts and skills.
What other hands-on activities do you use to incorporate STEM into your classroom? Comment below.