Assignments

Creating a tools for Culture of learning

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1OdYP5nFnRkwVrg3ZvCpMi2mRyDth6Czz49Y3ztJHpzE/edit?usp=sharing

Create a list of 8 - 10 games, prompts, and making things that you could use with a group of kids that would be feasible in a makerspace/STEM Room and would continue the mission of “building a culture of learning” or developing students’ “STEM Identity.”

1. DIY Fidget Spinner

Fidget spinners are great examples of how physics works—and after learning about those key STEM concepts, your middle school students can put those ideas into practice by making their own DIY fidget spinners.

These fidget spinners can be created with any range of standard household materials, like cardboard, pennies, and toothpicks. Utilize fidget spinners to help students identify the key parts of the design and ask them to envision how they would make the item from scratch, keeping the physics concepts you taught them in mind.

2. Magnetic Slime

Slime is a popular toy for middle school students, providing a fun sensory experience, but did you know that slime can actually be part of a great STEM lesson? Help your students create their own slime with a twist—it’s magnetic!

To do this, I'll need the following supplies:

Liquid starch

Elmer’s glue

Iron oxide powder

Neodymium magnet

Mix ¼ cup of Elmer’s glue with 2 tablespoons of iron oxide powder, and blend thoroughly. Next, add ⅛ cup of liquid starch and stir. With a bit of kneading, your slime will rise and can be magnetized with your neodymium magnet. It’s important to note that you will need a strong magnet to see the effects.

This STEM project can be used to teach about principles of magnetism and how magnets are a part of the world around us, from the earth’s magnetic field to magnets as a part of engineering and technology. This project is also a great opportunity to practice safe STEM and lab practices. Students will likely have to regularly partake in labs in their future high school classes, so it’s highly beneficial for them to learn how to be safe now.

3. Water Filter Challenge

We all rely on water everyday, but we rarely think about the systems that keep that water clean and healthy for us. Challenge your middle school students to think about this, considering all the ways we use water and how that interacts with the water cycle.

Provide your students with different materials to choose from in order to filter dirty water that you create with dirt and other additives. The students will create their filters within empty plastic water bottles, cut in half and fit into each other.

4. STEM Scavenger Hunt

A STEM scavenger hunt is a great way to get students used to identifying different STEM concepts and applications in the real world around them. This can be done throughout the school, as a take-home activity, or as a project over a period of time.

After teaching about essential elements of STEM, have your students look for them in settings outside of the classroom. Create a list of STEM-related items to look, such as:

Something that will float

A repeating pattern

A robot

Item powered by batteries

Something that uses gears

Something that uses a lever

A STEM scavenger hunt is a wonderful way to expose students to a range of STEM concepts, and the earlier students are shown these concepts, the more likely they are to develop a strong STEM identity. For example, when students find a repeating pattern during this activity, they can then be taught about spatial skills and symmetry. Recognizing and understanding symmetry is a spatial skill as it requires perceiving and analyzing spatial patterns and relationships, and spatial skills have a strong link with performance in STEM fields.

Some scavenger hunt finds can be expanded into a later lesson. For example, once students find something that uses a lever, they can later link that experience to the Kid Spark Education Simple Machines lesson. During the lesson, students will build three different types of levers and consider the mechanical advantage of each. 

After the scavenger hunt, be sure to have the students share what they found with one another so they can see the full expanse of where STEM occurs.

5. Math Escape Room

With the right prep and planning, teachers can create a math escape room as a fun STEM challenge for middle school students. This “escape room” will utilize math problems as the primary clues, which need to be solved in the correct order to find a final answer.

For example, students may need to complete a worksheet of math problems and then use the numbers they get in their answers to correspond with a key, revealing a hidden message.

This hands-on activity can be completed in groups and does not require any additional materials to do. 

6. Popsicle Stick Catapult

Challenge students with this hands-on STEM project! Using simple objects like popsicle sticks, rubber bands, and plastic spoons, your students will build their own mini catapult. Then, they’ll see how effective their catapults are at launching different objects, such as marshmallows, erasers, and paper balls.

Invite students to make adjustments to their catapults to see how that changes its performance. For example, adjust where the rubber bands are sitting and how many stacked popsicle sticks form the base of the catapult.

This activity can work well with lessons on physics, like when teaching Newton’s Laws of Motion and how energy is transferred. 

7. Straw Buildings

Create some healthy competition while incorporating key engineering concepts with this middle school STEM activity! Give each student or group a set number of plastic straws plus tape or glue to connect the straws, and challenge them to build the tallest tower possible.

I can tie this lesson into various engineering processes and principles. Ask the students to examine what worked well and what didn’t, and then consider how those principles can be applied to the buildings, bridges, and other structures that surround them everyday.

8. Mini Coding Camp

Put a spin on coding lessons by making it a summer camp theme! This activity can work with any coding program, adding in competitions for different groups of students or overall goals. It can also be supplemented by offline coding activities.

There are many free coding activities available online developed for students, making this STEM lesson easy to implement with minimal work for the educator. Those free online coding programs include offerings from:

Girls Who Code

Hour of Code

Code.org

Kid Spark Education - Robotics & Coding 101 

Be sure to research extracurricular coding camps in your area and online to share with students who particularly enjoy this aspect of learning STEM.

9. Lemon Battery

A lemon battery is a classic science experience for good reason! This hands-on STEM activity can help students better understand engineering principles as well as the basics of energy.

This project takes a few different supplies, including lemons, a copper coin, zinc electrodes, copper electrodes, lead wires with alligator clips, and a simple LED component. This project can also be done by using a multimeter. Follow the instructions from Science-U to get started.

Did you know that this battery can be recreated with other fruits and vegetables, too? Take the STEM challenge to the next level by bringing in oranges, limes, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, apples, or bananas, and then seeing how those power sources stack up against the lemon.

10. Archimedes Screw

For this STEM project, we go way back into the past, which is perfect for students who love history or to teach alongside a history lesson about Ancient Greece. Be sure to spend time explaining how the Archimedes screw and similar devices still can be used today for tasks like wastewater removal.

The Archimedes screw is a positive-displacement pump that can seemingly defy gravity to move water. You can complete this STEM activity with a few simple materials, including a PVC pipe, vinyl tubing which you will wrap around the pipe, duct tape, two different height surfaces, and water. 

Follow the project steps from Scientific American to implement this cool STEM challenge in your classroom.