STEM Week Challenge started in 2022 as we saw the need to deliver meaningful STEM and Experiential Learning programing to Elementary students in the DDSB. The Pandemic has made certain things obvious to teachers, in particular - that students were struggling with co-operative social-emotional skills. We designed the STEM Week Challenge to be a group-based adventure to keep students engaged in June while focusing on the Engineering Design Process. This was further reinforced with the new Science Curriculum's Strand A that came out in Fall 2022.
The STEM Week Challenge is designed to provide students an opportunity to explore hands-on learning in an Engineering framework. Each activity fits into a greater theme (2022: Deserted Island, 2023: Mission to Mars) and is accompanied with an Engineering Design Journal to capture students ideas and reflections as they design solutions to STEM problems.
Teachers are provided with a materials kit curated to accompany the activities. All of the activities are found in Google Slide Decks in a Google Classroom created for each year's project. Each year we have created 4 different Google Slide Decks to reflect different age brackets and complexity of projects.
Under the STEM Week Challenge Tab at the top of the page you can find the previous year's Google Slide Decks!