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Hello! My name is Alexandra Doty. I am a pre-service teacher at the University of Arkansas. I am currently taking Teaching Science in the Elementary Grades and an Intro to STEM course. I very much enjoy both classes because science is one of my strongest and most liked subjects. I am having difficulty deciding when STEM should be introduced to my future elementary students. My STEM professor believes it should be as early as possible in a child's education, whereas my science professor isn't too sure about the new stigma that has come with STEM. She believes that most elementary teachers are using experiments and activities that don't fully cover what STEM is all about. Lots of teachers are known to find those activites on Pinterest and other crafty websites, which usually result in a poorly planned activity/experiment for participating students. Personally, I have been guilty of doing this with a STEM class I teach at the Boys and Girls Club. I am interested in hearing other science professional's perspectives and opinions on the matter. Any suggestions of where to find accurate and well-planned STEM activities for elementary grades would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

Hi Alexandra.  I'm a native Arkansan living in Pennsylvania.  I am the principal of a private faith-based school serving students from Pre-K to eighth grade.  In our school we find ways to insert STEM activities for all of our students aligned with our state academic standards and NGSS.  On Friday, we had our Pre-K and Kindergarten kids put on a demonstration for the rest of the students in our school and the kids loved it.  Their teacher had the kids do an environmental diorama accompanied with worksheets and had practiced preselected questions with the kids.  Part of the activity required the kids to take their projects home and have their parents help them.  I was impressed.  The school set up a display so that the dioramas could be shown to all our students, parents, and visitors and the PreK/Kindergarteen kids were seen adjusting and putting lights on their projects while they were on display.  They were all engaged and yesterday when they put on their presentations, they were nervous but very, very proud.  Beaming proud.

Personally, I lean towards STEM professional organizations for well thought out and developed activities and experiments.  Some of the sources I've used is NSTA and their terrific FREE NSTA Learning Center https://learningcenter.nsta.org/  the USNA Stem Educator resource  https://www.usna.edu/STEM/teachers.php NASA resources https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/index.html NOAA Planet Stewards https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/planet-stewards/welcome.html and MBARI EARTH https://www.mbari.org/products/educational-resources/earth/ for starters.  Many of these places offer workshops for teachers which are excellent.  I hope this will give you some great ideas and places to look. Best of luck!