Naomi Meredith [00:00:00]:

It seems when teachers teach force and motion, you see the same science experiments over and over again. A lot of times, the kids see the same experiments over and over again, and they get a little bit bored. Well, your force and motion lessons are going to change with this fun STEM twist. Welcome to STEMusement Park. 

Naomi Meredith [00:00:53]:

Before we jump on in, I wanted to read an awesome podcast review from 1 of you. This is from ARC610 and they say, “Binging this podcast. This podcast has been so helpful for me to listen to this summer before I step into the role of STEM teacher for the 1st time. It's helped me feel more confident instead of overwhelmed. Thank you.” Thank you so much for your review. I love seeing these, and they don't always automatically pop up In Apple Podcasts, so when they do, it absolutely makes my day.

Naomi Meredith [00:01:37]:

I don't always know who is listening out there. I am here in my home office talking to my phone when I record these, and my audience is my little dog Frederick, and that's about it. So, reading these reviews is so amazing to me and also really helpful to other teachers like you out there. So, if you wouldn't mind taking a moment, pausing this podcast, and writing a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts, that would absolutely mean the world to me. What in the world is STEMusement Park? Well, here we are with another STEM themed unit of lessons, and you all know that I am the type of person and teacher who loves a good theme. This was my way of teaching a force and motion to my students k through 5 in a more creative way that can also build up those connections. So the benefit of teaching in units where you have a theme for all of your lessons And also looking at similar trends when it comes to standards, students can have that progression of learning and differentiation year after year. It does take some time to set this up and really think through your lessons, but when you do, it is So powerful and you're also creating an experience for students that they will always remember.

Naomi Meredith [00:03:06]:

So where in the world did STEMusement Park come from? Now, with any of my lessons, there is always some inspiration for why I do what I do. For this unit, I actually was in the process of teaching my K through 5, 7-year long plan that you can actually teach to your students as well that is in my t p t shop, Naomi Meredith. And I was in the process of teaching and refining those lessons and figuring things out, and I typically taught at the end of the school year, my LEGO education kits because they took 0 prep, they were ready to go, and students were engaged. Well, I ended up moving my LEGO education kits to when students do state testing because in my role when I was a k through 5 STEM teacher, I was also the technology point of contact. When it came to state testing season, I was basically on call like a doctor, and I had to run and handle a situation. When I had the LEGO Education Builds going during this time, I could leave the classroom, or oftentimes we would get a substitute for those 2 weeks of testing, they could handle that lesson, and then I was available. With that, since I moved all of those lessons, this freed up the last month of school. Just like the crazy teacher that I was, I decided that it was a great idea to start something brand new that I had never taught before at the end of the school year.

Naomi Meredith [00:04:49]:

Thank goodness this was not the year that I got married. I don't think I would have done that. But, hey, here we are. I tried it all out. When I was exploring the standards, I noticed that there was some sort of variation when it comes to force and motion. And I always wanna try to give my students a way to connect our learning to the real world. And amusement parks are a great example when it comes to force and motion and how it is used in a lot of different ways. And so, as I was planning and as I was brainstorming, I came up with the theme of STEMusement park.

Naomi Meredith [00:05:31]:

So STEMusement park. Not amusement park, STEMusement park. And the kids loved it when we did STEM survival camp at the beginning of the school year, which you can hear back in episode 4. The kids loved that unit so much. They kept asking me throughout the year, are we going to do some survival camp again? I said, no. That's not until next year. But I knew that they loved that so much and it was something interesting for them. So I came up with STEMusement park, and all of the lessons built off one another.

Naomi Meredith [00:06:07]:

Now, you might be listening and thinking, “That is absolutely insane. Why would you do Makerspace at the end of the school year?” And I'm going to propose the question to you: why not? It's actually a really good time to do a Makerspace project because the kids are doing a lot of things with their hands. And the way that I had my classroom set up, all of my Makerspace supplies were ready to go at all times, so it wasn't really extra work for me in terms of prepping materials because the way that I have students gather supplies is through my whole Makerspace menu and Makerspace money. All I had to do was think of the lesson and the progression of the lessons and how that would go and then we would figure it out. So that actually didn't worry me at all and this was a good time to actually go through my supplies and get things organized so that I knew what I needed to order for the next year or different types of donations I would be looking for or even things that I would just be collecting over the summer so I could replenish my Makerspace for back to school. We know that students, before long breaks and before summer, they have a lot of energy. This is a really good time to do Makerspace projects because the possibilities are endless, and they can always add to their designs and make it better. It is collaborative and hands-on and so this actually turned out to be an awesome time for this project.

Naomi Meredith [00:07:41]:

But you could really teach it at any time of year, this is just what worked best for me with my schedule and how things laid out throughout the year. So what did I do in terms of setting up the classroom? While I didn't do a full-fledged room transformation since it was the end of the school year, There were some pops of things that I added within the classroom to make it really exciting. I did make sure that I had plenty of storage space. So I emptied out my shelves, made sure that we would have room for all of our amazing projects, and then I did a little bit of classroom decor. I created a bulletin board that was all about different things along with force and motion and had a fun roller coaster design on there. I also hung up some balloons so that it could look more like the carnival section of the amusement park. I also played some carnival music and had a roller coaster going on the TV the 1st day when kids came in so that they would be curious and wonder what are we going to do in our STEM week. When I proposed this challenge to the students, STEMusement Park, I let them know that they were creating 1 section of the amusement park and they're going to be in charge of that.

Naomi Meredith [00:09:05]:

Students actually thought that we were going to combine all of our projects And we didn't do that but I also thought that was a really cool idea. So if you are doing some sort of STEM showcase or a STEM night, this unit would actually be perfect for this because when we get into all of the projects that are in this unit, They're very interactive and this would actually really do well in a showcase where the parents and the families can interact with the actual projects. So if that is something that you are thinking about for this time of year at the time of this recording for midyear, I would definitely recommend this unit for that. Also, for setup, I had all my materials ready to go and I also made sure that all of my Makerspace money, I had enough, I had enough wallets, And that was all set up along with my Makerspace menu. If you wanna hear more about my organization of my Makerspace and the management system that I use. Go back to episode 5 and episode 6 and you will find a lot of useful information there. Now for each of the grade levels, what did they actually do and explore in STEMusement Park? I'm gonna go through each of the challenges and give you a snapshot of all the things that the students did k through 5, And you can find those all within my TpT shop, Naomi Meredith, where all of the lessons are individualized for you. There is a bundle of STEMusement Park, and these lessons are also included in my big overall k through 5 STEM year long plan of lessons.

Naomi Meredith [00:10:49]:

In 5th grade, we explored force and motion and potential and kinetic energy with our rockin' roller coasters. Now, this isn't a completely new idea, but I did have more parameters on their designs so that they were not ginormous and took up the whole classroom. Their roller coasters had to be able to fit on 2 pieces of printer paper and so they had to really get creative with their designs so that they could fit those restrictions. As a class, we researched all about potential and kinetic energy. We looked at different examples of roller coasters, and students had to figure out a way to get their marble through their track. Now, as students' designs were progressing, they even tested their designs with different mathematical tests to see how fast the marble would go through their racetrack and keep track of all of their designs and some other math connections. For 4th grade, they were in charge of the race car ride. Now mind you, this is entirely a Makerspace project.

Naomi Meredith [00:12:06]:

We did not add any electronic components to these cars that they created. But if that is something that you are looking for, that can definitely be implemented in this lesson if that is something that you want to explore with your students. In this challenge, students were designing a race car That could be part of the race car ride section of the amusement park and we explore the different physics when it comes to race cars and what makes them really fast, Why do they have certain things on their designs? And then we actually design our own race cars that would roll. I taught them a technique that actually would help them with their wheels and axles where those would stay in place and attach to their car but then still be able to roll on their design. We did race their design. Students created a track that they would race each other through the use of having an inclined plane. So they were able to, have their cars roll down the track, but it was such a cool experience, and students came up with some really fun and creative designs for the race card ride. In 3rd grade, we explored magnetic energy by creating transportation within our STEMusement Park, and students created maglev trains that would transport people throughout the park while providing a different form of energy that could be used in this situation.

Naomi Meredith [00:13:37]:

We looked at different examples of different maglev trains in real life, and they were so amazed that they can go really really fast because of the use of these powerful magnets and the way that they are engineered. Students had large pieces of paper where they design a mini amusement Park like kinda like a prototype or tiny city of an amusement park so that their train could travel throughout the park and get the people to their different destinations and where they wanted to explore in that area. It was really fun having students collaborate on these and they did make everything three d and pop up, And they're actually able to have the train move around in the park and really explore with those magnets. For 2nd grade this design specifically I was inspired by my teacher honey because he loves to golf. And he is also a golf coach at his school and I thought that he would be really proud of this lesson. And he also has a ton of golf balls in our garage and so I donated those to my students every single week and they could actually keep them because that helped keep the golf ball situation a lot smaller in our garage. But anyway, 2nd grade their challenge was to design A mini golf game and all of the games could actually be a whole mini golf course which is pretty cute. And students Actually created a game that their golf ball could roll through a real golf ball, and we explored different properties of matter where different things might Speed up or slow down the ball and different ramps and different obstacles could do that as well.

Naomi Meredith [00:15:30]:

It was a bit of a challenge because the A golf ball is a lot heavier than they thought and they wanted to think of creative ways to demonstrate their part of the mini golf course. I was lucky enough that our PE teacher had some putters that we could use where students could actually putt the golf balls for real. But if you don't have that type of situation, you can even have students design a putter, which could be another part of the challenge. In 1st grade, we talked about light and sound communication and how in STEMusement Park, specifically in this section where there's all of the carnival games, light and sound is relied upon heavily to get the attention of people to come play the games. And also a lot of light and sound happens while people are playing the games Whether they score a point or whether they're playing, there's music going or maybe they lose a point. So light and sound is constantly communicating ideas and it gets really crazy when you get to that part of an amusement park because there is a lot of light and sound going on, and can be very overstimulating. Kind of the same thing with our challenges. So, students in 1st grade were tasked to create a carnival game that use some form of light or sound communication to get an idea across.

Naomi Meredith [00:16:59]:

So maybe if somebody scored a point, something made a sound, maybe certain balls had different sounds when they threw them and it meant something, maybe there were lights around the biggest scoring point of the game. Students had a lot of fun and creative ideas, and they loved playing each other's games, just like they loved playing each other's mini golf games as well. And so they were really proud of their designs because they had to really get into the rules and how to play the game and make sure that it makes sense to other people. And finally in kindergarten, we talked about force and motion and how different things can change the direction of the ball by creating wall mazes. This was the only project out of all of STEMusement park that students weren't able to keep their designs, but we were able to keep them up throughout the week. I invested in a lot of tape during this time of year and a lot of different materials. And students were building their wall mazes and we left them up on the wall. The students really loved being able to test each other's designs and try different marbles and different balls in their different wall mazes And even a fun challenge, they thought it was super fun in kindergarten, was chasing the ball across the classroom because it went really really far.

Naomi Meredith [00:18:28]:

So that was a good learning opportunity where I told students we might want to have something at the end of our wall maze where it could actually catch the ball. So this whole STEMusementement Park experience was an absolute blast. Again, students would look forward to this experience year after year and it was another great way to incorporate those standards while also making it hands on. As a recap, here are the 6 different challenges that students were able to experience in STEMusementement Park. 1st, we had the Rock and Roller Coaster Challenge for 5th grade. Next was the STEM Race Cars for 4th grade. 3rd, we had the MagLev transportation for 3rd grade. Then we had the mini golf course creations for 2nd grade.

Naomi Meredith [00:19:21]:

5th were the light and sound communication carnival games. And finally, the different cardboard wall mazes in kindergarten. If you're looking for a different way to teach those force and motion standards and want to make it hands-on, I encourage you to try out this STEMIUSEMENT PARK challenge. This one is so much fun, can harness your students energy but also help them learn those important STEM concepts. Thank you so much for being here, and I'll see you in the next episode.