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Hi all!
I am a future teacher who is very interested in STEM education and I want to find fun ways to incorporate it into my classrooms down the road. Does anyone have any advice on how to incorporate it into the classroom? Are you wishing that you had more time to teach it, especially for younger students?
Do you have any favorite resources you use?
I hope everyone is having a great weekend!
Chris
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Hi Christopher. I like your thinking. I use the Explore All Resources tab often when planning a lesson that I want to incorporate STEM into. I use ngss.nsta.org for classroom resources. You should check it out, just know that there are a lot of great resources there. I was lucky enough about 3 years ago to get a set of the Picture Perfect Science Books which gave me a format and ideas of ways to incorporate more STEM in my lessons. I highly recommend following NSTA on Twitter and you will find other like minded teachers to follow through that media. Search for STEM teachers on FB and other social media platforms. Most teachers are willing to share!
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If you would like to learn about implement STEM best practices into your classroom, there is a federally-funded STEM teacher professional development program for educators in the US, provided by the Missile Defense Agency.
The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is part of the US Department of Defense. MDA STEM Education Development (STEM ED) is a formal professional development program for K-8 educators. STEM ED begins with a week-long summer workshop during which educators explore STEM concepts in real-world contexts and develop STEM-related instructional activities aligned with state standards and rooted in research-based pedagogical strategies. Workshop activities include STEM concept presentations and hands-on sessions with subject matter experts, educational excursions, demonstrations of STEM experiments and emerging technologies, discussion of research-based strategies for STEM instruction, standards-aligned instructional activity development, and STEM educational kits for classroom use. Following the workshop, MDA STEM professionals and university partners will continue to support participants throughout the school year as they implement STEM instructional activities.
No fees are associated with this course, hotel and most meals are provided, and the application includes a travel reimbursement request. US citizenship is required.
Applications are due March 31.
More information can be found at https://www.mda.mil/about/STEMed.html
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I like to think about STEM as a way to enrich my lessons, not as a separate lesson. Throughout my lesson’s children are encouraged to work together to experiment with what they are learning. This has been made easy for me by using a 5E lesson model. Throughout this model they are encouraged to look at ideas from a different perspective, explore their new ideas, and elaborate and expand.
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Hi Chris!
Some of my favorite resources, in addition to the NSTA Learning Center, are teachengineering.org (gives good background info for teacher) , AIMS (Activities Integrating Math & Science), Picture Perfect Science (using literature as a springboard), and the NASA Activity guides. I find it much more fun for me and for my students to cross-connect my lessons. Once you begin to use various pre-created STEM units, you will begin to feel more confident creating your own STEM lessons/units. There is so much out there already though.
Tori
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I have a collection of STEM resources for grades 4 thorugh 9 here on the Learning Center. I have attached them here for you and any other readers. Feel free to contact me if you have questions.
Hope this helps!
Gabe Kraljevic
Gabe's STEM resources Collection
(43 items)
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Hi Christopher!
I am a preservice teacher who is currently in Introduction to STEM class and I LOVE it. Even though it is the beginning of the semester, I have already learned so much. So far I have learned how to drill into wood, use a saw, create our own Engineering Design Process/Loop, use a laser printer to create our own name tags, construct our own spaceship (out of marshmallows, popsicles, tape, and paper), and next week we are about to make a catapult. My advice on how to incorporate STEM into your classroom would be to have students build anything they can and be able to learn how to use tools, such as scissors, glue guns, drills, saws, etc. Even though drills and saws might seem scary for elementary students to use, our teacher always talks about the importance of teaching them safety tool usage early. Attached below are some handouts on what we have been given so far. I hope this is helpful to you and feel free to tell me about what you discover.
-Ashley
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Hi Chris,
STEM is an amazing concept and great way to integrate many content objectives into one lesson. Although I am not a teacher in my own classroom, I have had many opportunities teach STEM while as a preservice teacher. I have helped plan and implement STEM activities for children ranging from ages five to twelve years old. One of the resources I have used is Picture Perfect Science books. These books are a great resource for those beginning to implement STEM into their classroom. There are so many great resources if you just research them on Google or look them up on NSTA. Pinterest can be another great supplemental resource.
I know that teachers like the idea of STEM, but they feel like they have more important content standards to teach throughout the day and there is not enough time for STEM. I think a great way to incorporate STEM into the classroom is by incorporating other content areas into it as well. When working with the younger students, I incorporated literature into our STEM projects. We would read them a book that tied into the STEM activity we were doing. This could easily be done with older students as well. Social Studies is another easy subject to incorporate into STEM. For example, “The Dirty Water Project,” (www.teachengineering.org/activities/view/cub_environ_lesson06_activity2) is about keeping our water clean and how we can clean our water. This is not only incorporating science, but also teaching students about citizenship and our duties as citizens.
I hope some of these ideas can help you incorporate STEM into your classroom! Let me know if you would like to hear of more STEM activities I have done or if you have any more questions.
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Chris,
I think it is such a great idea that you are wanting to implement STEM into your classroom! STEM is a great way to get students intrigued and interested in their learning, and also allows them to show off their creativity, imagination, and problem solving skills. STEM is a great way to incorporate many subjects, science, technology, engineering, and math, into one lesson and altogether in a different way. Although I do not have my own classroom just yet, I have had many opportunities to bring STEM to students in extracurricular activities, and inside of a Kindergarten classroom. I get many of my own ideas for STEM projects on pinterest, or sometimes you can even find some interesting topics on google. From there, you can either use that exact idea, or adapt it to better fit into your classroom.
Many teachers wish to implement STEM into their classrooms, but find it difficult to do so since there are so many other concepts and standards a teacher is required to teach by the end of the year. From the experience that I have had, working with other students, I try to incorporate literature into my STEM activity. Usually I do this at the beginning of the lesson to introduce the concept. I have seen this done my many teachers and I beleive it is a good way to start to build an interest in the minds of the students. I have also recently read about incorporating art and humanity into our STEM. This allows for another piece of STEM that can again, appeal to students and allow them to show off their creative side.
I hope my response has helped you a little on how to implement STEM into your classroom, even with the little time teachers have throughout the school year. Good luck! :D
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Hello Chris,
I would just like to start out by saying how excited I was to see that you are a new teacher who wants to use STEM activites in their classroom. Many new teachers would be too timid or shy to try such a complex concept like STEM during their first years of teaching but I think it is great! STEM is one of my favorite things about the world of education because from my own personal experiences of being a student, I learn best by doing hands-on activies and so I want to do as much as I can for my students who learn the same way.
Although I just finished my junior year in the college of education, I have had many opportunites to plan, create, and work with students during STEM activites. With STEM activites, I always think it is great to tie in a piece of literature to get the students engaged and excited about the activity. Also, including a piece of literature is a good way for students to make different types of connections like text-to-real world or text-to-self. A good resource to use for including literature in with your STEM acitivties is the Picture Perfect STEM program. This programs provides literature books as well as sample activites that can be used to go along with the pieces of literature. It is nice because you can use the books provided by the program and adapt the STEM activity to age or content specific to your students. It is a great resource! I use pinterest a lot too for trying to come up with fun activites for students to do.
As you know, teachers learn best by doing, so I think it is only fair to give our students the opportunity to learn and experience things on their on just like they will in the real world. I hope this helped.
Have Fun!!
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The Picture Perfect STEM program sounds great and like something I need to check out. I am a preservice teacher currently doing my student teaching. I always love tying in reading whenever possible. STEM is something I would love incorperate into hte lessons I have do to. Getting pratice running STEM activites during my student teaching would be a great gateway to doing it when I'm the fulltime teacher since I'll have some experience with it already.
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Hi Christopher!
I am also a future educator planning to implement STEM into my class. I am student teaching next semester and will be graduating University of Northern Iowa here in a couple of months. I have had several courses through my education here at UNI talk about implementing STEM, however I feel that those ways won't necessarily fit in with my coursework of early childhood. I am curious to see what you find out. I will be following this post!
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Hello Christopher,
I am currenty a pre-service teacher and implenting STEM into the classroom is so important to me. I actually just finished up a course where we had to write STEM lesson plans, but incorporate physical activity into them. It was for sure an interesting class, and it helped me realize how I can make subjects like math and science really fun and exciting for my students to learn. I don't want to just give them information. I want them to be up and moving, too! I will for sure be following this post for other ideas from educators.
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