STEAMing Through Learning

A two part lesson ending in a STEM challenge. A fun way to introduce gravity as a push/pull force and friction. Using toy cars and simple wooden ramps, students hypothesise and investigate what happens when you change the incline of the ramp. Can be adjusted for older grades - investigating/measure incline angles. Students then investigate how friction acts upon the toy car. What happens if we add a different surface to the ramp? If you have time, why not let students engineer their own 'best'

A two part lesson ending in a STEM challenge. A fun way to introduce gravity, air resistance and drag as forces that act upon paper airplanes. Students make a simple paper airplane, test and record the flight distance before making one modification. A great way to reinforce fair testing. Students can work in groups, pairs or individually. I am a Science teacher who teaches K-6. I have done this lesson with a range of grades 3-6 and all have loved it! I have found this is a great supply teacher

Practise fair testing and learn about the types of variables. Who can grow the biggest sugar crystals? Students work in pairs to change one variable (amount of sugar). What happens when we add too much sugar? Not enough sugar? Plus when you are done you have a delicious treat!

A hands on lesson ending in a STEM challenge. A fun way to introduce forces and simple machines. Students make a simple catapult based on a lever system. Can be adapted to suit higher or lower grades. Students can work in groups, pairs or individually. I am a Science teacher who teaches K-6. I have done this lesson with a range of grades 1-6 and all have loved it! I have found this is a great supply teacher back up activity as well. All you need is some paper cups, pop sticks, pom poms, rubber b

A fun way for students to learn about forces. Included in this bundle is a presentation file for your interactive whiteboard and a student workbooklet that goes through the design process. A success criteria matrix is included in the student workbook :)

Investigate how our skeletal system helps us move then relate this information to how machinery moves. Build a robotic hand (credit from http://aclassofone.blogspot.com.au/) before the the real fun begins! Collect boxes, cans, plastic bottles, buttons etc. to engineer your very own robot. I got my Y1 students to label their robot with their own robot name and a short description of how their robot moves. The file is PowerPoint and comes with lesson notes on each slide.

In this hands on STEAM challenge students have to engineer a Mars rover that can land safely with "expensive scientific equipment". Students: - Research Mars and think about what the surface of Mars is like - Research NASA Mars rovers and luna landers - Mindmap possible ideas in collaborative learning teams - Draw initial schematic designs (labelled scientific diagram/engineer plan) - Create a prototype of their Mars Rover - Test and reflect on their design We used eggs as a measure of how t

Design a catapult out of everyday household materials. Lean about push and pull forces. Who can make their snowball fly the greatest distance?