What is STEM?
STEM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — in an interdisciplinary and applied approach.
[Science]“[Science] is more than a school subject, or the periodic table, or the properties of waves. It is an approach to the world, a critical way to understand and explore and engage with the world, and then have the capacity to change that world..."
— President Barack Obama
STEM came from Judith A Ramaley , who coined the term STEM. STEM corresponds to the growth of the economy. Through the collaboration of iPad you can integrate STEM in the classroom. All grades and age groups can do it! Stem needs to happen all throughout school and starting in the early grade so they can be prepared to get jobs in the workforce.
STEM BINS:
“STEM Bins are plastic school boxes filled with an engineering manipulative of your choice, such as Legos, pattern blocks, base ten blocks, unifix cubes, toothpicks and playdough, or popsicle sticks with velcro on the ends. The boxes also contain small sets of task cards on metal rings that picture a variety of basic engineering structures. STEM Bins can be placed on an easily accessible shelf in the classroom or inside a classroom Maker Space area. When students’ regular classwork is complete, they can take one STEM Bin at a time, either to their seat or a more quiet carpet area so as not to distract other students who are working, and get a quiet moment to engineer. They use the materials in the box to construct as many different structures on the cards as they can. And instead of being just “busy,” students are engaged in creative, complex tasks and are encouraged to think like inventors. Kinesthetic learners, spatial learners, and logical learners will love exploring the different possibilities for the building materials as they try to construct more challenging structures.” –teachers outside the box.
Check out her blog for great STEM bin idea!
Great for:
- · Early finishers
- · Centers
- · Morning work
- · Behavior inceptives
- · Fine motor skills
Each box has manipulatives such as baseten blocks, popsicle sticks with Velcro, leggos
The boxes have books inside and it contains pictues. The students recreate the pictures for example if the picture is a house the students will create a house. They can work in groups or individually. You can use the Seesaw app which is a digital portfolio and the students can take pictures of their structures and upload them. (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/seesaw-the-learning-journal/id930565184?mt=8) The parents can be connected to their seesaw and see what they are doing in class.
STEM CHALLENGES:
Check out this website for some awesome STEM challenges for Elementary students. Here are 28! http://www.teachjunkie.com/sciences/stem-challenges/
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