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End of Year STEM Activities for Kids

End of Year STEM Activities for Kids

end-of-year-stemThe weather is getting warmer and the students are bouncing off the walls. What are some end of the year STEM activities to help capture that energy? Check out these ideas that can be implemented in the elementary classroom. With minimal materials, many of these can even be taken outside. Enjoy the end of the school year with these hands-on activities that will also build memories.

 

End of Year STEM Activities for Kids | Not a Box Marble Maze

After reading the book, ‘Not a Box', students design a marble maze using Makerspace supplies. Dive in deeper by creating game rules, modify using a checklist and receive peer feedback.

This lesson can be worked on throughout the day as a long-term project. Or, only choose to plan and design. There are many different options with this lesson which makes it perfect for the end of year.

Materials needed: Not a Box by Antoinette Portis, cardboard boxes, plastic straws, masking tape and marbles

Click here to grab this lesson for your class! 

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End of Year STEM Activities for Kids | Build a Shelter Challenge

How can you build a shelter that will withstand the elements? This STEM lesson follows the Engineering Design Process and can even be done outside! Students can use a combination of materials found outside, along with items found in the Makerspace to build a structure that can withstand rain, snow and wind.

Learning how to reiterate their designs is powerful for students in their growth mindset journey. This lesson tests those components. Read more in detail about how I taught this lesson HERE

Materials needed: items collected from outside, masking tape, plastic grocery bags, string, paper bags

Click here to grab this lesson for your class! 

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End of Year STEM Activities for Kids | STEM Get to Know You

Have students reflect on their favorite STEM activities and topics from throughout the year. This digital activity can also show off their design skills built from during the year. Even if this was completed at the beginning of the school year, it would be interesting to see how students' thoughts changed. 

Materials needed: can be printed, but any student device compatible with Google Slides, PowerPoint or Seesaw.

Click here to grab this lesson for your class! 

 

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End of Year STEM Activities for Kids | Insect Makerspace

After researching about their favorite insect, students can build it using various Makerspace supplies. Students can even invent their own insect and make sure they have all body parts that make and insect, well, an insect!

Materials needed: various Makerspace materials

Click here to grab this lesson for your class!


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End of Year STEM Activities for Kids | Kid-Safe Slime

Even if students have made slime many times before, add a twist to this lesson. By exploring this non-Newtonian fluid, students have many tests to determine which slime recipe is best. All three recipes are written in smaller proportions to keep material cost low and accessible for many classrooms. 

Materials needed:

  • Unicorn Slime {glue, water, food coloring, glitter, saline solution}
  • Smoothie Slime {glue, water, food coloring, Tide laundry detergent}
  • Fluffy Slime {Crayola model magic air dry clay, lotion}

Click here to grab this lesson for your class! end-of-year-stem-projects

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I hope these ideas help to have a successful end of the school year!

 

Resources Mentioned in this post:

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What questions do you have about STEM Survival Camp? Feel free to direct message me on Instagram, @naomimeredith_ and I would love to chat with you!

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4 Authentic State Testing Prep Ideas

4 Authentic State Testing Prep Ideas

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State Testing Prep isn't a fun topic to talk about, but it's a reality public school teachers face. Instead of stressing about the test, preparing can happen naturally year round. This doesn't mean teaching to the test, rather helping build students' skills so they are comfortable with the testing platform.
In turn, students are learning valuable technology skills that can be carried into other content areas.

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State Testing Prep | #1 Get Kids Typing

Just like handwriting, typing takes practice. While there is value in using typing games, this shouldn't be the only way students learn to type. Typing games can be great homework practice or a morning warm-up.
The real typing practice takes place when students are using the computer authentically.
Yes, it will take students forever to complete assignments through typing. At first.
However, the more it's an integrated part of the classroom, the less stressful typing will be for students. Published pieces are a great start, but also have students type “unpublished work”. Typing shouldn't be seen as a final piece type of tool. 
Think about how we, as adults, use computers daily to complete tasks. Not also of us are typing to create a published piece! Emailing, texting and lesson planning are a few of many ways how typing improves efficiency into our lives.
Students should have the same opportunities as well, that are appropriate to their learning environment, to use typing authentically.

Here are a few ideas:

  • Give kids a creative writing prompt once a week where they need to type what comes to their brian and not having to use the entire writing process.
  • Have students typing their thinking about reading when using paper books.
  • Turn the weekly reading log and response into a digital assignment
  • Have students explain their thinking when solving a math problem through typing
The more integrated assignments are, the more kids will respond naturally when they are posed typing questions on a test.

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State Testing Prep | #2 Answer Digital Questions

Along with having students type in a variety of ways, answering questions online is equally as important. Many questions on the computer are different than traditional paper & pencil tests. Both have importance, and both need to be practiced.
Some varying question types that differ on the computer are: scrolling on a page, toggling between two tabs and drag and drop questions.

Below are some great free resources to use with your students year round to practice answering digital questions.

1. Readworks.org: Differentiated reading articles you can digitally assign to students with corresponding questions

2. TweenTribune.com: Kid-friendly current events with deep thinking questions and a few multiple choice. There are often a few differentiated levels of each article as well.

3. Google Forms: Students don't need a Google Account to answer questions on a Google Form. Take a screenshot of the math problem/reading article you want students to focus on. Then, create different types of questions to correspond with it.

4. IXL.com: While there is a paid monthly membership, students can still answer a certain number of questions for free each day. The site is organized by grade-level, math concepts, and standards. It will immediate tell students if they are correct of incorrect with their thinking.

5. Math Playground.com: Free online math manipulatives. Using tangible manipulatives is important too, but students do need to know how to use digital manipulatives for various testing platforms.

6. GetEpic.com: This is an amazing, free-for-teachers website. With eBooks, audio books, read-to-me and videos not connected to YouTube, teachers can find resources that fit any content area. Teachers can also create quizzes for books with your own questions.

7. BoomLearning.com: This is also a website that has free and paid features. You can assign digital, self-correcting task cards to students for free to correspond with your content. There are many free card decks and paid decks to choose from.

 

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State Testing Prep | #3 Answer Questions Using a Rubric

Students should be given time to practice a short constructed response in comparison to a rubric. After reading an article, have students respond digitally through typing. Then, print their responses for the following day (without names).

Pass out the written responses and in partnerships, have students evaluate the responses based on the criteria rubric. Afterwards, discuss as a class why certain responses were scored accordingly.

This exercise isn't meant to embarrass kids; rather a learning opportunity on how they can improve. This also gives students a chance for their work to be seen from a different point of view.

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State Testing Prep | #4 Learn Testing Tools

Part of the reason why students become overwhelmed with testing on the computer is knowing how to access the digital tools.

I teach in Colorado and we take CMAS, which. is a form of PARCC. There is a practice website to view and try question types and respond digitally.

As the testing window draws closer, practice with students how to use the tools on the practice website first. Creating a scavenger hunt to help search for and access the tools can help guide students' exploration.

Here is an example of one scavenger hunt task:

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If possible, have students work in pairs to complete the hunt. This will give students the opportunity to talk about accessing the tools in a less stressful environment and add an element of gamification to the lesson.
 
Does your state use PARCC or CMAS? Click here to grab these scavenger hunts for 3rd-5th grades. They are no-prep and also include a mini lesson to help introduce the test and question types.

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Don't forget to grab these scavenger hunts for your class!

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What questions do you have about preparing for state testing? Feel free to direct message me on Instagram, @naomimeredith_ or send me an email, contactnaomimeredith(at)gmail.com, and I would love to chat with you!

 

How Selfies Can Transform Student Gift Giving


Every year as a classroom teacher, I always stressed out about having the perfect gift for my students to give to their families during the holidays or at the end of the school year. As a person who enjoys giving gifts myself, I try to ensure that my gifts are purposeful and unique.

I believed in the same concept as to what I was going to have my kids make. While I am a big fan of crafting, with 24 children, it can go bad real quick. Also thinking about how much it was going to cost each student to make their gift can get expensive!  

After some thoughtful planning, I thought of a way to integrate students' use of technology into their family a gift to save time, money and still create something personal. 




That's where I came up with the Selfie Station Calendar. With a new year approaching, a calendar is very useful! I know that teachers will often times have their kids decorate each month with a little art project, but honestly, that seemed like a lot of work to me. 


Instead, each month was decorated with their child and different props to represent each month. My first year doing this project, I brought in some items like sunglasses, hats, and all sorts of crazy stuff and a parent helped me take 12 different themed pictures of each child. As this project evolved each year, it's been more student centered and less work for me. After all, it's THEIR gift that that students are giving to parents!



What did you use for the calendar? 


I created a calendar template for each month using Google Slides. The top portion I left empty for students to insert their pictures. I shared this template with the students in my class using Google Classroom so that it made a copy for each one of them. This also was great management when students needed tech support and I could hop onto their piece and work with them to solve the problem. 



When the calendars were finished, I could easily find each students' name and print. Another added bonus was for students who had divorced parents, I could easily print multiple copies and they didn't physically have to make more than two. 



What did you use for the props? 


As I mentioned in the beginning, my first year doing this project, I brought in all sorts of random stuff I found at home and in my classroom. Any costume item that I owned was in my room for over a week. As this project evolved, I actually created my own printable props that were themed for each season of the year. 


This actually turned out a lot better because students had more prop choices for their photos, I could store them easier in just one file in my filing cabinet, and they actually turned out to be more vibrant and photogenic! 



 


I printed and cut out each theme, sorted them by months and wrote in pencil on the back which month the prop represented. I then sorted the months around the room and students would grab one prop at a time to take their photo for that month. 



How did they actually add their pictures? 


Since students were working with a Google Slide and using their Chromebooks to do so, there is a feature within Slides that allows you to take an insert a photo within the application. {It's funny because this used to be an original feature, it was taken away, but now it's back.} 




Students helped one another face their computer camera at the proper angle to take a picture for each month of their calendar and then insert in to template. 

You can have students make their own calendar or work together collaboratively and have a class calendar! That way, you will only need to print one! 


How did you manage their projects to ensure they were finished in time? 


Since my 3rd graders hadn't ever done a gift like this before, there was a huge amount of buy in. They also thought that the props and my example calendar was funny so they were super excited to make their own. I also started this project the month before break so I could print and bind each calendar and then have students wrap them. That way if students were absent, I had plenty of time for them to make to make it up. 



As far as the prop management went, I told students that they didn't necessarily have to go in order for their calendar. That way not all the January props were gone at once! 


We worked on these for about 30 minutes a day for 3 days and the majority of my class was finished. Those who finished quicker were able to help others or even type in important events within their calendar. 


How much did this gift cost you?


Zero dollars. That's right! Since I made the props and calendar template myself, it was free-99. I also had the benefit of having colored card stock paper to print on for the props and binding I could use to bind the calendars. 



I did have to print in black and white a couple of years because of restrictions we had on our school's color printer. They still looked really cute! I also told the kids that they could definitely print in color at home and send to other family members as well. 



I know that the cost might vary for different classrooms, especially if you use my template and props to get you all set up. Overall, this is a low cost project that is highly engaging for your students. There was a reason why I did it many years in a row. The families absolutely LOVED them! 





How have you used a selfie station in your classroom? Let me know and send me a message on Instagram @marvelousmsm


Stay marvelous!



Naomi from Marvelous Ms. Meredith