STEM Activities (3-8)

This session will focus on inquiry-based activities that are designed to demonstrate student achievement on the Nature of Science & Engineering strand of the Minnesota Science standards. These activities will also allow students to demonstrate their understanding of engineering design practices that are considered necessary for literate citizens per the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Participants will be given simple problems and will need to consider possible solutions using every day items. The NGSS ideas of defining the problem, designing, building, testing and revising solutions will be used.

About the presenter - Michael Plocher currently serves at St. Paul's in New Ulm. In addition to teaching middle school science, Pre-Algebra and STEM related topics he is also the Director of Technology. Before coming to New Ulm he had served as a middle grades teacher and Family Minister, and as a principal and upper grades teacher. He graduated from DMLC in 1993 with a STEP-Science degree. This past spring he received his master of science in education with a technology emphasis from MLC.