End of the Year in the STEM Lab
Objective:
To recap the year’s activities and topics in the STEM Lab
Key Words/concepts:
Everything from the whole year
Overview of 3-5 Lesson:
My objective for this final session of the year was to bring a bit of closure to the activities we’d been doing all year. I began by going through an activity I usually do at the start of 6th grade that includes thinking of the traits of a scientist. In this case though, I expanded the question to all STEM fields and had the students provide ideas and personality traits that could apply to all. The one word I did not take was “smart” because that has become a sticky label for some students. I encouraged them instead toward curious, willing to learn, educated (in and out of school) and other similar and attainable terms.
From there I introduced the game Hit or Miss adapted for large group play. In this case, one topic was chosen for the whole class and everyone wrote down as many words as they could think of on that topic, trying to both think the same as everyone in their group and differently. I really like how this game rewards both the in and out of the box thinkers and find that it works well as an introduction to group work. Once the students had their words (about 90 seconds), I went through the sharing and scoring rules. Even though we had the same topic for the whole class, the students shared and kept score only with the rest of the students at their table (usually 4-6 students). To keep track of whose turn it was to share, I gave each table a little stuffed dog that I had six of for some reason, but you could use beanbags or any other simple item that could be passed around. In the “Hit” rounds, the person with the dog shared something that they thought others would say, and got a point for each person with that word (I had them raise their hands). In the “Miss” rounds, the person with the dog shared something they thought no one else had, and got a point for everyone with their hands down. We went through the first cycle of the table somewhat slowly to make sure everyone understood the scoring and the movement within the game.
To choose the categories for this game, I sorted through the deck of ideas that came with the game and chose the ones that would be appropriate for elementary students (Famous Toms or Things done at a wedding reception were indeed weeded out). In each class we did 2-3 rounds from the cards and then my final topic was “Things you have done in the STEM Lab this year”. Most students thought quite a bit about the activities but each class had the handful who listed “breathing” and “sitting”. It was neat to see their faces as they shared their activities from the year and remembered back to things they had forgotten about. With the classes that had additional time, I had them sort all their answers onto the STEM Placemat and then had each table share a hit or a miss with the rest of the class.
Most classes were able to pick up the concept and the rules fairly quickly, with more structure definitely needed for the 3rd graders than for the 4th and 5th graders. I like that the rounds in this game are reasonably quick so that the students are able to stay engaged without getting bored, although I did have at least two students ask “Is this all we’re going to do today?”. In the end, they got to total up their score and the one with the most points won bragging rights. I was actively leading this game the entire time so unfortunately there are no photos.
Overview of K-2 Lesson:
I started the lesson for the younger students the same way as for the older grades by discussing personality traits of scientists, etc. I knew that the structure of Hit or Miss and the writing involved would be prohibitive for these students so I instead decided to play Heads Up/HedBanz with them. The general concept of any of these games is the same. The person playing puts a card on their forehead that they can’t see and everyone else gives them clues to guess it. I created a list of at least 30 words related to the STEM Lab and printed them on cardstock for the students to play with.
Each student at the table started with 5 cards and then play rotated around the circle giving clues. Some of the words were purposefully more difficult (hypothesis, challenge) but others were just terms that the students weren’t familiar with (makerspace, pipe cleaners). I allowed students to give rhyming clues or even spell the word out if the student was having trouble. They didn’t keep score and just kept rotating around until time was up. At the end, I had them sort all their cards into the STEM placemats, which caused some very constructive discussions (Is a “Table” related to science or engineering?). This activity was great with the 1st and 2nd graders and just barely within reach for the Kindergartners, mostly because many of them couldn’t read the words. I did thin the stack for them to only include the simpler words but they still had a bit of trouble focusing on their peers while playing the game.
Materials/Requirements:
Hit or Miss- paper, pencils, hit/miss die, sharer marker (dog, beanbag, koosh, etc)
Heads Up- cards with terms on it
