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'

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!

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.

Designed as a second part of the Australian Colonies unit (Australian Curriculum) This unit builds on knowledge of the Gold Rush and early Australian colonies. It looks at significant events that shaped Australian migration and then models an inquiry on a Vietnamese migrant (Anh Do). Students complete their own research project on a chosen migrant submitting a timeline of their life, a venn diagram that compares their experiences to other migrants and a text that outlines their experiences of mi

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

This task was designed for a Y5/6 group who were learning about adaptations (science) and how people shape places (geography). We used it as the hook (at the beginning) for the unit of work. As a class begin by: - Revising anatomical and behavioural adaptations - Revising ecosystems and biomes Students then work in collaborative learning teams to engineer an imaginary animal: - each student chooses one body part and has to label the anatomical adaptations - as a group students can also identi