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How to Get Materials for Your STEM Classroom [Back to School Series] [ep.172]

How to Get Materials for Your STEM Classroom [Back to School Series] [ep.172]

Check out the full episode about how to get materials for your STEM classroom:

 

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Episode Summary

In this episode, I’m sharing some of my favorite tips and strategies for gathering materials for your STEM classroom, no matter what kind of budget you’re working with. Whether you're starting the school year or need to replenish your supplies midway through, I’ve got you covered. From self-donations and tapping into your school community, to grant writing and borrowing materials, I’ll walk you through how to keep your STEM space stocked and ready for all your innovative projects.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • Self-Donations:
  • Teacher & School Donations:
  • Parent Community Contributions:
  • Grant Writing
  • Borrowing Materials
  • Taking Inventory

Resources Mentioned:

Some items are linked to my Amazon Affiliate account. When you purchase through my link, there is no added cost to you, but I receive a small commission in return.

Episode Transcript: 

Welcome to the Elementary STEM Coach Podcast. I'm your host, Naomi Meredith, a former classroom teacher turned K-5 STEM teacher and coach. With over a decade of experience teaching and a master's degree in STEM leadership, I'm here to coach you throughout the year to help you gain back more time to create innovative experiences for your students.

How do you get materials for your STEM classroom? Some of you have nice hefty budgets and you are fully stocked in your classroom and you can buy pretty much whatever you want. But most of you do not and you need some creative ways to gather materials for your STEM space. Whether it is for back to school or even midway through the year, what can you do about it? I'm going to be sharing with you some tips that I have done for my STEM space and continue to do for the ways that I teach in STEM.

So let's jump in. First are donations and there are a few ways that you can do this. First, you can actually donate yourself.

Yep, that's right. You can actually donate to your own STEM classroom and I am thinking about those recyclable materials. You will be so surprised about how many recyclables that you collect in your own home by yourself and you can bring them to school.

I am so much in the habit of collecting recyclable materials such as the thin cardboard, cardboard tubes, plastic bottle caps, and I have little places I store them in my home office and when I need them, I take them out as I go. But I am so used to collecting the cardboard especially that when my teacher and honey and I were traveling this summer and I was making a charcuterie board, there was a lot of thin cardboard with the things that we were eating and I was debating whether or not I should take that cardboard home. I was already flattening it and ready to cut it up.

So that is a really great space to start. Like I said, you're going to collect way more than you think. If you wanted to, you can have a few of your next-door neighbors collect for you and that so-and-so garbage will start adding up.

Speaking of this, the other way you can collect donations is asking the teachers in your building. I put a box in our teacher's lounge and wrote a handwritten note. Hey, any of your cardboard that you have from your lunch, put it in this box.

And the cardboard was overflowing. And when you teach a lot of kids, you need a lot of cardboard. So that was an easy way to gather cardboard that was already in my school.

For other types of materials, and this was really helpful when you really need those hands-on manipulatives, is ask those classroom teachers if they are getting rid of anything. A lot of times, curriculums will change over. There are different manipulatives that are provided.

They might not want the old ones anymore. And so ask those classroom teachers, are there any Unifix cubes they don't need anymore? Pattern blocks? Those types of things. You'll be surprised what will come into your classroom.

And along those same lines with donations, you can definitely ask your parent community, whether it is paid for items like batteries or different types of supplies, glue sticks. You can even ask for recycled materials as well. Have a couple of donation boxes where it's easy for families to drop off, and you are good to go.

You can even think about how you can break this down for specific projects, or if you ask certain grade levels at different times. I have an editable letter that you can send out to families. It has some cute little materials on the side, some cute little pictures.

So you can edit that, send that out. I will link it in the show notes. Next is thinking about writing grants.

Maybe as a classroom teacher, you wrote some grants. Maybe you haven't, and you're kind of a little bit overwhelmed about grant writing. I'm not going to get too far into it, but grants are really helpful for those bigger purchases and thinking about things that could be used for multiple grade levels and for multiple projects.

So you want to get really creative on what you are going to write a grant for. I have a handful of episodes that is all about STEM grant writing, so definitely recommend checking those out. Specifically, refer to episode 76, where I talk with Jennifer Mahan, who did a ton of grant writing for her classroom, and she shares all of her successes.

After that, in episode 77, I speak to none other than DonorsChoose, and they talk all about grant writing and how beneficial that is. I have written a few DonorsChoose grants and got those funded, so it definitely is a great resource. And also check out episode 127, where a teacher that I worked with in my group coaching, and this is also something I can do in my one-to-one strategy sessions, she wrote a successful $1,000 grant for her school, for her STEM space, and it got funded when we worked together.

So grant writing is definitely a must, and you actually have a leg up because it is for STEM, and a lot of grants want to help out in the STEM space, so that is worth your investment of time. And finally, consider borrowing materials. You don't actually have to own everything that is being used in your classroom.

Are there materials at local libraries that you can check out and use in your classroom? Likewise, are there things in your district that you can check out and borrow? My district did that. Actually, my local library does that with materials that we can actually check out things as teachers, and also my school district had a lending program where we could actually use items and borrow them from the district, namely 3D printers, robotics, so I didn't have to own them, and you're not usually teaching the same thing all year anyway, so that was actually really, really helpful. Also, do you have a partner school? Can you guys swap materials for specific lessons? I would swap different robots with my STEM teacher friends, and that was really helpful.

Again, we don't have to own the items, and we trusted each other enough where things wouldn't get broken in a horrible way. We knew things to get taken care of. Maybe if you are allowed to, can you combine funds? Maybe you have a little bit of money, they have a little bit of money, not enough to buy what you want, but if you combine, could you combine money and actually buy something? Maybe you could check out your district policy, and also maybe a local company would be willing to lend something for you to borrow as well.

Maybe they have a 3D printer or something that you can use, like maybe one of those interactive tables, those sand tables that show topography. You never know. You're gonna have to get a little bit creative, but don't feel like you have to own every single item in your classroom.

It is nice, but if you only need it for a short amount of time anyway, why purchase it? Can you borrow it from another location? If you're wondering what in the world should I buy? How do I even know where to begin? What kind of donations to look for? I actually took inventory of my K-5 STEM classroom at the end of the year, one year, and put together a whole inventory spreadsheet. If you make a copy of it, it is a live link, so you don't get all of the real-time updates. I will periodically go in and change and update things in there, but it's completely free.

There are different categories of things to think about to add to your space. Also think about the lessons that you have as well. I actually go more into how to plan and prep for what you need to buy.

In my STEM Teacher 101 course, there is a lesson all about that. There is a method to the madness. It's not like, I just want you to buy this.

I just need to buy this. I actually have a whole method of how I go through purchasing every year. Again, all the things that I am mentioning will be linked in the show notes.

Before we go, I wanted to read a quick note from one of you who messaged me on Instagram. I love these notes so, so much. This teacher said, your podcast is my summer binge.

Starting my new job as a K-5 STEAM teacher after 10 years in general education. Your tips and tricks are so practical and give me realistic takeaways that I know I'll use in my classroom. Thanks for your hard work.

Thank you so much for the kind words. I love getting all of these messages. If you haven't already, when this episode's over in a few seconds, go ahead and leave a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

That would mean the world to me. All those sweet messages that you send, I absolutely love. I write back to you.

Put them on the podcast so people know, hey, this is a show that I should listen to too. I would appreciate it so much. Thanks again for being here.

Happy back to school and I will see you in the next episode. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the elementary STEM coach podcast. I would love to connect with you over on Instagram at Naomi Meredith underscore, or send me an email to elementary STEM coach podcast at gmail.com. Also make sure to check out my website, Naomi Meredith.com to see all the show notes from today's episode and shop my K-5 STEM resources.

Any questions you have, needs for resources or ideas for episodes, get in touch. I'll talk to you soon.

Related Episodes/Blog Posts:

Check out this playlist on Spotify I put together with all the episodes related to Back to school! 

 

 

 

Connect with Naomi Meredith:

 

More About your host, Naomi Meredith

Naomi Meredith is an online K-5 STEM Coach in Colorado supporting elementary teachers world-wide navigate the best practices, strategies and tools out there. With over a decade of experience teaching, 5 years teaching elementary STEM, along with a M.Ed. in STEM Leadership and STEM Certificate, Naomi helps teachers world-wide to navigate best practices, strategies and tools out there. 

She offers a variety of tools to help teachers feel successful teaching STEM to their elementary students through lesson plans, online courses, coaching and speaking events.

She truly believes that any teacher out there can learn how to use STEM, innovation and hands-on learning in their classrooms effectively. She can’t wait to connect with you and be your guide!

More About The Elementary STEM Coach Podcast

Are you tired of scrolling online for your next great STEM lesson? Do you feel like there is no time to plan, research and test meaningful STEM lessons, so you throw together a hands-on activity and hope that it works? What systems and routines should you set in place to help students be creative, critically think, and collaborate? 

The Elementary STEM Coach is a podcast for K-5 STEM teachers, classroom teachers, GT specialists, and homeschool parents looking for actionable STEM solutions. Each week, Naomi Meredith will share tools, resources and lesson ideas that are actionable in your classroom and create highly engaging experiences with your students. You’ll learn systems and routines that will create control in the chaos and that will keep you organized all year long. 

Your mindless scrolling days are over! Your new STEM-best friend is now here in your ear buds!

$1000 STEM grant

How this Teacher Successfully Wrote a $1000 STEM Grant [STEM Teacher Pathway Series] [ep.127]

How this Teacher Successfully Wrote a $1000 STEM Grant [STEM Teacher Pathway Series] [ep.127]

$1000 STEM grant

Check out the full episode on How this Teacher Successfully Wrote a $1000 STEM Grant [STEM Teacher Pathway Series]:  

 

Subscribe to the podcast HERE on your favorite podcasting platform.

Have a STEM question? Leave a voice message for the podcast!

Episode Summary

Have you ever felt frustrated because you don't have certain materials to implement innovative STEM lessons? One way I’ve been able to navigate this issue is through writing grants for the materials I need in my STEM classroom. Grant writing is a great way for STEM teachers to secure the resources they need to incorporate fun and engaging STEM activities in their classrooms. In this episode, I’m sharing how I supported one of the STEM teachers in my group coaching program with successfully writing a $1,000 STEM grant. I’m taking you behind the scenes of how we strategically prepared for the grant writing process, decided on what materials to write a $ 1000 STEM grant for, and so much more.

 

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • How I supported a teacher in my group coaching program with writing a $1000 STEM grant
  • How we decided on what types of materials to write $1000 STEM grant for
  • Things to consider when writing a grant
  • Tips and strategies for successfully writing a $1000 STEM grant

Resources Mentioned:

Episode Transcript: 

Naomi Meredith [00:00:00]:


Frustrated that you are required to teach innovative lessons but don't have the materials to do so? While it does take some thoughtful prep work from the beginning, grant writing is an amazing opportunity to take advantage of as a STEM teacher and gather the materials that you are hoping to use in your classroom with your students. When it comes to grant writing, you want to be strategic in the type of materials that you are writing a grant for, the longevity of that tool, and how it's going to impact not just 1 set of students but students for many years to come. In this episode, I'll be sharing with you a STEM teacher's success when writing a $1000 STEM grant and the things that she did to prepare for this opportunity. A big benefit of working together with me and other teachers in my group coaching program for STEM teachers is we take a look at your overall lessons and how they fit into a cohesive year-long plan, and we also take an inventory of the supplies that you have and how those things fit together.


Naomi Meredith [00:01:42]:


From there, a really big benefit is that we get weekly live calls together that are customized based on the group needs, and also a group chat where we can talk about the topics that are related to the live call or other questions that you have in your STEM space. Now, another thing that we do in the months that we have together in this group coaching program that I haven't talked a whole lot about yet is grant writing. Grant writing actually has a really big impact on your STEM program because you want to use all of these amazing tools for your students. And unless you had a big huge overhaul and all of this money put forth into your program, more often than not, you have to fit all the puzzle pieces together and figure out how you're gonna get materials at certain times and build up to the program of your dreams. Because of the work together in our group coaching program, I actually have, as the coach, the overall view of where everybody's lessons are at, but also the types of materials and how that can even go into the grant writing process and what to even write a grant for. There was a teacher in my program that I want you to meet, the one who was able to write a successful $1000 STEM grant for her program. This teacher teaches pre-k, so even the little ones, pre-k through 5th grade STEM, twice a week, and like many of you, she is responsible for building up her whole program when it comes to lesson plans, figuring out supplies, and all of the things in between. She had a really great start to her year-long plan and even had some of the things from my k through 5 STEM year bundle of lessons, but I also felt like with the things she had and then didn't have, her lessons were kind of all over the place.


Naomi Meredith [00:03:40]:


So she wanted to create a more cohesive curriculum, which, by the end of our program, we were able to do, and also add in more structures when it came to STEM stations. If you go back to the last episode, episode 126, you can hear more about the lesson planning that we did as a group and how we integrated materials that the teachers already had and planned an amazing k through 5 STEM ocean unit, and we even added in different types of STEM stations. So you can finish this episode and then go back to that one if you haven't checked it out already. Towards the last part of our group coaching program, once we've done the lesson planning, we have our year-long plan figured out, and what we're going to be teaching, teachers have the opportunity to work with me when it comes to writing their grant. And this teacher that I'm talking about had a really great program, especially when it came to coding lessons and the tools available for that. But they really needed more things when it came to hands-on coding and robotics. And we know that STEM materials are pricey, especially if you want to invest in things that have a longer shelf life and can be used with a lot of kids. You really want to get high-quality materials.


Naomi Meredith [00:05:02]:


Now, the timing of this was absolutely perfect. Great writing was something we were already going to be working on, but this teacher's principal actually sent a grant opportunity her way to look into. Now, a little caveat to this: this teacher does work in a private school. And so, if you are a teacher who's working in a private school, make sure you read the fine print when it comes to the type of grants that you can be eligible for because every grant has its different rules and regulations, and all of that. I do have other episodes that I'll link in the show notes when it comes to grant writing and other tips and tricks that you can use along the way, as well as some different grants that you can look into to help you get started. So the principal sent her a grant this way, which was funny because this was actually one of the ones that was on my list, and she was thinking about, okay, how can I really make the maximum effort for this grant? In my experience as an educator, especially in my k through 5 STEM role, I have written a lot of grants. And you really can write a grant for anything. My biggest ones were $1000 STEM grants, so the same amount that this teacher was looking for.


Naomi Meredith [00:06:15]:


And the biggest thing when it comes to grant writing is not so much the tool but how you can create an engaging and innovative variance for the students where it is impacting the students that year but also years beyond, and also thinking about those cross-curricular connections. Now, if you're thinking, okay, great, it doesn't matter about the tool, it kind of doesn't because let me tell you this, my school needed document cameras. Our document cameras were really old, and these are an essential tool in the elementary space. My teacher, Honey, who teaches high school, doesn't really so much use a document camera. But in elementary, it's super essential, and the ones that we're having were dying, they were bulky, they had 5,000,000 cords, and we needed document cameras. Well, honestly, when you talk about it, it doesn't really sound like that innovative of a tool. However, the way that I wrote that grant, I was actually able to get all brand new document cameras to outfit our whole school, just by the way that I wrote that grant. So that is one of many that I did in my experience.


Naomi Meredith [00:07:24]:


So, really, it's just how you word things and put it all together. When it came down to it with recommendations and looking at her year-long plan and things that would benefit her program, even based on the supplies that she had and didn't have, we decided on writing a grant for coding and hands-on materials like robots. The coding materials were things that she could use in STEM stations, which was a big thing that this teacher wanted to do in her year-long plan anyway. And with those STEM stations, you don't have to figure out every single little thing and create it from scratch. There are a lot of great tools out there that lend themselves to STEM stations. So, we figured out a couple of things that would work really well for STEM stations. And even if students use them repeatedly over the years, this program actually has different apps where students can progress at different levels. So that was super great and, again, hands-on.


Naomi Meredith [00:08:21]:


And then we also added in some robots so she could build up her collection from there. With our collaboration together and from our live lessons, I was able to help her write a rough draft when it came to the questions for the grant writing. So I definitely recommend when you are writing a STEM grant, to figure out what the questions are when it comes to the grant, you might need to create an account, they're always free to create your account. So create your account, figure out the questions, and then type those out on a document on the side. So when you get to filling out the actual well application, you can just copy and paste. I actually was writing a couple of grants for something else this morning, and I did the same exact thing. Because a lot of times, when it comes to these grants, you can't see ahead what the questions are. Or sometimes you can't, like, while you're filling it out, like, you can't go forwards and backward.


Naomi Meredith [00:09:18]:


And then, sometimes, with the grants, it won't save your progress. So, if you make an account, see the questions, and type up your answers, this can also help you with spell check and everything. The couple of grants that I was writing today had a word limit. So, I was really limited to a specific amount of words to get all of the information in there. So that is something that we did. This teacher and I worked together. She added her own story, which is also really important when you're writing any kind of grant. And if it's a STEM grant, what is the story? Why is this going to have an impact on your students? Who are your students? Why do they need these tools? We, the people who are reading your grants, know that it is expensive, but why is this something that you need? So that is something that she and her principal really worked together once she had that draft that we did together and was able to put forth that information that was very specific to her school.


Naomi Meredith [00:10:18]:


The cool thing about this is that this document is actually available to everybody in the group because those specific things she added in on the side on her own copy, but we were able to brainstorm together as a group different opportunities, different types of grants you could apply for, What are those limits to the type of grants? What are certain materials that would work well? And what are different lesson plans you could plan forward to? There are tons of grants out there. I recommend going even for those smaller grants. You have a better opportunity when it comes to getting those materials, but also be really thoughtful with those things that you were hoping to get. With our time together in our group, this teacher was able to write her a first $1000 STEM grant for these STEM supplies and turn it in way ahead of the timeline. We are hoping to hear back, but the process was so fun and collaborative, and really no stress at all because we were able to bounce off and talk about ideas together. If this is an area that you definitely need support in, and also when it comes to thinking through your year of lessons, having somebody having that overall picture of what your year can look like and also taking a deep dive into your supplies and what would work well for lessons, but also what could work ahead in the future, I have some a few spots available in my STEM into fall group coaching program. The spots are limited, but we have a great time together as we meet for a course of a few months to really help you feel successful in your space and also have that community support that you have always been hoping for in this STEM role. I invite you into this program and would love to work with you. You can find the information in the show notes or go directly to Naomimeredith.com/STEMintofall.

$1000 STEM grant

 

Related Episodes/Blog Posts:

 

Connect with Naomi Meredith:

 

More About your host, Naomi Meredith

Naomi Meredith is a former classroom teacher turned current K-5 STEM teacher and coach. Her role not only includes teaching over 500 students in her school, but also leading professional development and co-teaching with teachers to help them integrate STEM & Technology.

With over a decade of experience along with a M.Ed. in STEM Leadership and STEM certificate, she helps teachers navigate the best practices, strategies and tools out there.

She truly believes that any teacher out there can learn how to use STEM & Technology in their classrooms effectively. She can’t wait to connect with you and be your guide!

More About The Elementary STEM Coach Podcast

Are you tired of scrolling online for your next great STEM lesson? Do you feel like there is no time to plan, research and test meaningful STEM lessons, so you throw together a hands-on activity and hope that it works? What systems and routines should you set in place to help students be creative, critically think, and collaborate? 

The Elementary STEM Coach is a podcast for K-5 STEM teachers, classroom teachers, GT specialists, and homeschool parents looking for actionable STEM solutions. Each week, Naomi Meredith will share tools, resources and lesson ideas that are actionable in your classroom and create highly engaging experiences with your students. You’ll learn systems and routines that will create control in the chaos and that will keep you organized all year long. 

Your mindless scrolling days are over! Your new STEM-best friend is now here in your ear buds!