00:00

Help! I am a new STEM teacher, and I see five different classes a day with a total of 25 different classes for the week. I am feeling a little overwhelmed with how to structure all of this time. Any advice? 

00:17

Does this sound like you? In today's episode, I will be sharing with you different ways to structure your STEM lessons when you see different classes every day to help you feel more confident in the lessons you teach and less overwhelmed. 

01:03

Before we get started in today's episode, I want to read another review that I got on Apple podcasts. Like I said before, I read these reviews, which make me smile. You guys say the sweetest things, encouraging me to continue this podcast. This one is written by M Kircher 04. They said, “What a great idea. I can see myself growing my new STEM program now. Thank you because you always have fun and practical ideas.” Thank you so much for your review! That is so kind of you. Like I said, I do read all of these. So if you listen to me on Apple podcast or watch the episodes on YouTube, leave a review or comment.  I read these, and this helps encourage me to continue to create content for you that will be valuable in your STEM space. 

01:57

I've been talking to many teachers on social media and through email. Many of you teach STEM with five different classes a day, which equates to seeing all the kids in the entire school! I completely get it. In fact, within my five years of being in the STEM space, my schedule has been different and ever-changing all across the years. So let me give you a little snapshot of what my role has been in STEM. Currently, I see the kids five days a week, K through five, with a total of six different classes a day for 45 minutes. I see them Monday through Friday, the same classes, which I feel like I'm fortunate because I can continue and go deeper into those bigger projects. However, it hasn't always been like that. Actually, the year I first started in STEM, my first few days of the week, I was co-teaching with teachers in their classrooms to help them integrate technology and innovative practices.

Then, Wednesday through Friday, I would teach K through 5 again for 45 minutes a week. So my lessons were a lot shorter when it was only three days. Another year on Mondays, I would teach eight classes a day. I think it was about 35 minutes per class with no passing time. Then Tuesdays, I would co-teach in the classrooms. I would teach K through five STEM 45 minutes a day on Wednesday through Friday. So I've had a mixture, which means I totally understand when it comes to seeing a lot of classes in one day and not seeing them again for the rest of the week. 

03:42

When I had that schedule where I saw the eight classes a day on Mondays, it didn't always line up with the kids I saw Wednesday through Friday. So I treated my Mondays more as isolated lessons rather than combining them with my regular instruction. Because I felt like the times always didn't line up, and it didn't always just make sense. Oh, and not to mention, I have always been our technology lead at my school. We don't have a tech teacher, so that is me. So I completely get it when you feel overwhelmed with things because I sometimes feel it too. So that is real life, and I'm here to share with you some tips that have helped me in the classroom that I know will also help you. Here are three different ways you can structure your one-day-a-week class with kids, where it can still be a meaningful experience for students, be rooted in standards, and be meaningful with your short time with them. 

04:43

I feel like this first way to structure your lessons is the most common way to start with planning. I recommend you start with this, especially if this is your first year in STEM or your time has also been shifted. These are one-day lessons if you see the kids once a week. These lessons allow you to start and end on that same day. I like to call them a challenge of the day. So even though you have that one day, name it the something challenge of the day. So here are some ways you can plan a challenge of the day lesson. One way you can do this is by having a STEM in stories lesson. Now there are a ton of picture books out there that are geared towards STEM. For example, the questionnaires with Rosie Revere Engineer and Ada Twist Scientist fit perfectly in the STEM space. Also, consider other stories that aren't always used in STEM that could also have a place. So books that have a clear problem and solution are great to integrate into your instruction and allow you to hit those ELA standards in your classroom. Sometimes it is tough to get through a whole story, especially when kids are transitioning in, you're getting to know them, and they want to chat with you. 

06:06

So try this little hack when you are reading stories in the classroom. Of course, you could look up the story on YouTube. However, I think it is more meaningful when you, the teacher, are the one reading the story. I have a whole blog post about this. I will link this in the show notes, Different Ways That You Can Create a Virtual Read Aloud. I know you're in person, but still, use those virtual teaching tools in person. Here's what I mean by this, I recommend getting an e-book version of the stories you want to read or even taking pictures of the hardcover version and adding those to your Google Drive. Have digital pages of the story you want to read to your students, and then share that on your screen and screen record yourself with your picture and video in the camera. You can play that with your students. You will be surprised by how much more quickly you can read this when you are online instead of in person. This will help speed up the time when you have a really short time with your kids. I do this still even though I have 45 minutes with the kids. I still screen-record myself reading specific stories. They are not on my YouTube for copyright reasons. I save them in my personal Google Drive. I read the stories with my little dog Frederick, and I introduce him to the camera. So that's fun, too, for the kids to see. So I highly recommend recording these stories at home because you can add in your little pets, and the students can make that connection with you. Screen recording yourself reading the story can help speed up the time when you're planning a STEM in stories lesson.

When you plan your lesson, you might not always get to the part where they're planning and drawing their design. Instead, their plan could be talking to a partner about how they would like to attack the problem. Then they can build the solution using reusable materials like blocks, LEGO bricks, hashtag blocks, anything reusable that they can build, possibly take a picture in seesaw or Flipgrid cleanup. Then there's no storage at the end of class. So you are done with that whole thing from beginning to end: story read, the creation is built, they share in some way, and they are on their way. So this is a great way where you don't have that storage issue.

09:47

Another way to plan a challenge of the day lesson is to create it in a somatic theme. One way that I did this on Mondays with my eight classes a day is Dot Day, which is coming up. Now, we will have an episode about Dot Day. This is September 15ish. The website even says ish, but Dot Day is September 15. This is a great one-day celebration in the STEM space where you can have a quick activity; again, tie it into the book that the kids can do with you, have a short experience with STEM, and be on their way. When planning STEM and story or even thematic lessons, I recommend combining grade levels. So for Kindergarten through Fifth, you can combine lessons that can help you save on the materials you need to plan, shorten the cleanup time, and the amount of time it takes to prep things. This is especially helpful if you have a short transition time between all those classes. 

10:54

Another way to plan your lessons is by condensing longer projects spanning one to three days. In my K through five STEM year-long plan, I have a year of different lessons you can teach K through five. You can find this year-long plan at naomimeredith.com/yearlongplan. It will also be linked in the show notes. When I originally planned these lessons, they could span about five or more days. However, you can choose what works best for you and your classroom. I always provide more than enough content because I know everyone's situation is different, and you all have different needs for what you need to teach in your space. There are also digital materials included in the year-long plan. So you don't have to make many copies every time unless you want to. 

11:53

The other day, I was talking to a teacher about this on Instagram. We discussed how she has the year-long plan and is picking and choosing what works best for her within her first year of STEM. Shout out to her. This is a great way to save time when you're planning. When looking at a lesson that spans about five days following the engineering design process, you may wonder how you could do that when you have limited time with kids. The first day could be all about building background knowledge and doing some research about the challenge at hand using all of those different research tools that we've talked about in the past, like podcasts, videos, ebooks, epic books, to lots of different materials to get the kids excited and build background on the topic. During that same day, have students plan their designs. They can do that by drawing, labeling pictures, and possibly making a shopping list. In episodes five and six, I talk more about the management and setting up of your Makerspace. If you haven't listened, go back and check out those episodes. That will help you with your management for all these classes that you see. On day one, you have the background built, and then they create a plan the next week that you see them, day two, maybe three, this is definitely up to you. Day two can be looking at their plan, reviewing that information, and building their creation. I also recommend keeping those projects very small, so small enough to fit in a gallon-size Ziploc bag if you want to store them. This also helps you save on materials and all of that prep work. You can build day two, and if needed, keep them and go on to day three. Or you can even be done with building day to try it out. But that's not much storage for you over the long term, and you could fit it in over that week. 

13:53

The last way that you can plan your lessons when you have an interesting schedule with five classes, different classes, and a day is you can implement STEM stations. This strategy isn't something I would recommend starting immediately at the beginning of the year. As a classroom teacher, Stations are built up during those first couple months of school. As a STEM teacher, I recommend following that pattern and getting into the stations around the fall when students are used to routines and following multi-step directions. I like to use STEM stations with my K-One students. When I started my STEM role, I used stations with K through five. This helped me as a teacher learn how to use the tools and how things worked with different grade levels and test things out with minimal materials. Again, you can do this with K through five yourself or if you want to do this for the younger students. Definitely up to you. I recommend only having up to four stations and completing two stations a day for your short time. That way, you can have students complete two stations on day one and the following week, complete stations three and four. You could even carry on the following two weeks, three and four, or days three and four, and repeat those stations. That will help save you time on planning. You may get a little bored with explaining the directions 25 times, but it will be a new experience for the kids. 

15:33

Here's one way that I plan first-grade stations in my classroom. Each station follows each letter of STEM, so science, technology, engineering, and math. There is a station that goes along with each one. Of course, these are very integrated stations, so they don't necessarily have to be that letter. It's a good way to help remind students what station they're at and what STEM means. One station was constellation creations, where the students built different creations using geoboards. They had the images at their station and then a laminated sheet with a list where they could check off the ones they created that day. Another station was a space engineering inspiration board where students had different images related to space. They could build those different things with LEGO bricks. The third one was moon phase puzzles, where students had all eight moon phases cut up into puzzle pieces. They had to layer them on top of the full images of the moon phases and learn about them along the way. The fourth station was day and night robotic coding. So using robots, students rolled a dice, and the dice said day or night. On the grid they were coding on were different things that could be seen during the day, during the night, or during both, which was fun for them to think about those conversations and things that they have background knowledge about. At the beginning of class, I reviewed all of these stations and how to do them, then students had enough time to go to two stations the first day and then two stations the next day. If you're interested in these stations, these will also be linked in the show notes so you can check those out and modify those for your classroom. 

17:28

As a recap, here are the three ways you can plan your STEM lessons when you see different classes every day. The first way is the challenge of the day lessons. The second way is to condense longer projects into one to three-day lessons. The third way is creating STEM stations where students have four stations to rotate through two stations a day. I go into more detail about these lesson planning methods in my STEM teacher 101 course, and it has different examples for you to check out. You can get all that and all the links from today in my show notes for this episode. Thank you so much for joining me today. Let me know if there are other ways to support you, and I will chat with you soon.