Naomi Meredith  00:00

It's important to have guest experts speak with your students in the STEM space. While the experiences that they are having in your classroom are super powerful, you can bring a whole other dimension to their learning by hosting guest experts. In fact, there are studies on this. According to an article written by Invent.org, children should be exposed to role models who look, sound, or learn like them to help them gain confidence in their own ideas, abilities, and potential. They should also be exposed to role models who are different from them so that they respect the ideas, abilities, and potential of others. In today's episode, I share three classroom guest speaker ideas for STEM.

Naomi Meredith  01:16

A couple of quick things before we get started. If you are loving this podcast, make sure to go ahead and write a review. I definitely want to share these on the show and hear how this podcast has been making an impact on you. This helps other teachers know if this podcast will be a good fit for them and help them along their STEM journey. In fact, here is a recent five-star review by Kay Kinner teach, always fun I need for my STEM lab. Naomi's podcasts are exactly what I need for helpful tips and tricks in the STEM lab. Every episode is full of great advice for a new STEM teacher. She continues to inspire me to try new things. Thanks so much for your review. Kay Kinner teach. Also if you've missed out on the K through two STEM virtual workshop, don't you worry, the whole experience was recorded. When you sign up, you get access right away to that recording and all the resources that we used during that time together. This will be linked in the show notes for you so you can definitely enhance your instruction for the little ones. Also, coming up in March, I will be starting a monthly virtual book club as a way for you to connect with STEM teachers monthly. Make sure to get on the waitlist at Naomimeredith.com/bookclubwaitlist, so you know when it is going to be launched, and it will be just in time for spring break and summer. So even if you don't read the book, you have access to all the materials each month. You can still join in when we do our live zoom sessions to connect with other teachers and talk about STEM topics. Of course, we'll talk about the book a little bit. But we'll also talk about things that are related. So it's okay if you don't read the story. So I'd love for you to jump on then when that is live. 

Naomi Meredith  03:13

To help you through the process of connecting with a guest expert. I have collaborated with the EdTech company Sam Labs, and we created a checklist to help you through that process. So that way, you don't have to miss out on any of the important details when you are connecting with a guest expert that would be perfect for your STEM lessons. It definitely simplifies the process. These are the exact steps that I use when I set up a guest expert in my classroom, and I want to help you out with that process, so you're not overwhelmed. So make sure to check out the link in the show notes where you can grab that, and there are also some fun goodies when you click on that link that you definitely don't want to miss out on as well. With that in mind, here are three classroom guest speaker ideas for your STEM classroom. It really does break down the walls and barriers of having these experts in your STEM space. It really doesn't have to be boring. So the kids don't just have to sit and get the information, you can definitely make it interactive and really fun and tie it into your experiences. I will be going into more detail about some of this in the next episode. So just make sure you go and listen to that. In the next episode, I chat with someone I know who had a really cool guest expert experience. So hopefully I can get them on the show, and they can chat with you about that. 

Naomi Meredith  04:37

The first classroom guest speaker idea for STEM is to connect it to your class projects. This can be done in a few ways, and you can definitely use this for long-term projects or short-term projects. So maybe you are working on a project that lasts a whole week. Maybe you are working on something that lasts for the whole year, or you're building up to something for the whole year, a guess expert is a great experience for this. I know in a past episode, I was talking to the co-creator of Rock by Rock that we talked about guest experts quite often and how they use that in their curriculum. So make sure to go back and check out that episode because it was a really powerful episode. And just some cool guest expert ideas that you can use in your lessons. When you have these guests experts, and they're connecting to your lessons, you could have them come at the beginning of a lesson to help students build background about the topic. So we talked about in the Imagine Stage when we're doing the Engineering Design Process, or a similar type of process, where you want students to build background about the information. So it will inform their decisions when they are planning and creating their design. It's not just some random, let's build whatever thing, but their design is purposeful. So having an expert talk about their experiences and having a related project they might have done and what has worked well, what hasn't, and maybe some research they are currently working on that will relate to the project. These will be some cool ways to really engage students and ask questions of somebody who is currently in a similar type of role. Another way you could use an expert, it could even be the same expert, is to have them come in during the experience when students are building. So students might have researched and built background a different way informed with their decisions. Then you can have this expert come in during that time, which is a really great way for students to engage with that person. They might even have a different perspective than you as a teacher because they are working in a field that is similar to this. So that might even help bring a really cool perspective on how students can improve their designs, and it might even just improve the overall project. Finally, another way that you could use the same expert or a different one is to have them come in at the end of your experience and give students feedback on their designs. So this is a great way where students can share their work with a real life audience. That expert can share, “Wow, this would work really well. Or I like how you thought of this design in this way. And here are some ways that you could definitely improve your design.” And here's why based on my experience, this would be really powerful for kids to hear this type of feedback. So they're not always hearing it from their peers or always hearing it from you as a teacher, but someone who really legit understands what is going on. That would be just a really neat experience for students to have in your classroom. 

Naomi Meredith  04:37

Another classroom guest speaker idea for STEM that you can try is to have a STEM career day. This is something that I am in the background working on and hoping to host at my school in the spring. It really came up very organically and randomly. I had a parent who volunteered at our school who subs for us who's super great. And she came in, and we were chatting for a little bit. She told me that in her past career, she was actually a packaging engineer. So they thought through the process of how things can be packaged in really purposeful and systematic ways. She asked if she could come in and chat with the kids about her career. I told her oh my gosh, I would love to have you, logistically, it might be a little tricky, because I want all the kids to hear from you. We were talking a little bit more, and we came up with the idea of how cool it would be to have a STEM career day where it would be an in-house field trip experience for all the kids in the school. Now last year, we actually had to have a last-minute inside recess day. The PE teacher actually set up a really good rotation schedule, where all the kids still got to participate in Field Day, but it was inside the building. So I asked the PE teacher for that schedule because she already set it up. She has rooms that are assigned where kids would rotate through. So I thought that this would be really helpful when I get to planning the STEM Career Day. Logistically, that way all the kids can experience this and hear from a ton of different experts in STEM in one day. The reason why I'm also wanting to do this in the spring as we know the spring can get pretty crazy, and it can also be a little tricky. As a STEM teacher, you don't always get to go on field trips. So you can bring the field trip to your school, and a really awesome way to have community partners and parents be involved in this experience. Also, if you are doing this during the day, this can guarantee that more kids can attend. It'll probably be free. You don't have to worry about buses. You don't have to spend any time let's say in the nighttime setting this up, and people are coming back to school because that might not always be a possibility for all of the kids to attend. So that's why doing this during the day would be really awesome. When planning this, kids can rotate through 10 or so different careers in different rooms, where the presenters can share a little bit about their jobs and how it relates to STEM and even have a quick engaging activity that they can do with the students. So again, another cool way where kids can learn from their parents and each other's parents, see role models that are relevant and current in STEM fields and help students even maybe dream of jobs that they never thought that they would have before. So stay tuned for future episodes, I'm definitely going to work this out and figure this out for my school. I think it'll be so much fun. I will figure out the process and figure out the kinks for you. Then we will chat about it in a future episode. 

Naomi Meredith  10:54

The last way of having a classroom guest speaker for your STEM space is to host a school-wide virtual assembly. Again, this is another great opportunity where you can have all classes involved. I hosted a school-wide virtual assembly for my school this past winter. I'm definitely going to set another one up. Virtual was awesome. You could definitely do it in person. But we did virtual for a couple of reasons. The person I had talk at our school lived a few hours away, and logistically the weather was bad. So we just planned it as a virtual event. Also, behavior management was way under control. I don't know about you, but my students haven't been to a lot of assemblies since COVID. We've had a few here and there, and they were absolutely chaotic. There are a lot of parts of them that have been a waste of time. So when you do something virtual, you can jump right in. The way that we did this is I was in my classroom, I didn't have any students. But I was handling all of the technology. So I was watching the chat. I was texting teachers who were having trouble getting into the Zoom. I had the presentation of the presenter pulled up just in case it wasn't going to work, and then I could jump in and do that. Or I could fill in if there was a weird technical issue. So I was all on the technical side of this and had this all set up for my school. Then the students were in their homeroom classroom, and they were watching this event live in their classroom. So again, this really helped with the behavior management of their students who needed a little bit of a movement break. They could do that. The first grade and Kindergarten, I believe they watched the whole time. But if they needed to drop off at the end, when we got to the question and answer session, they totally could do that. There were even a few classes that were combined during this time. So if there was a sub for the day, they could combine classes, or I think just some classes combined anyway, to make this experience. We also have two different assembly schedules at my school. So if this isn't something your school has just logistically, it's nice to set up. So I didn't really have to manage all the times per se, we already have this type of schedule set up. So I just let people know, hey, this is coming up, I was promoting it. And we're going to have an afternoon assembly schedule. And here's where you're gonna check-in. I'm going to talk more in detail about this experience. And then the next episode. And this was really, really awesome for my school. It was with a US Space Force captain. So a very new field in our world. And he's actually a computer engineer. So that was really awesome for the kids to hear from him. Now, if you're having a hard time finding people, then you can definitely think of other opportunities that are out there that are hosting live webinars. In a past episode, you actually heard the audio from a live webinar that I was able to participate in. I got to be the host of this live webinar and interview an engineer at NASA who worked with the space rovers Spirit and Opportunity. That was actually her lifelong dream in middle school. She's also still working at NASA working with the current space rovers. This was an awesome opportunity. It was live. But it also is pre-recorded. So all that information will be linked in the show notes if you want to show this to your students. And I believe that this platform has other past webinars that you could check out. So this would be another cool way that you could bring this experience to your school. You could set it up as a virtual assembly, maybe even record the one that you're doing so you could use it for future years or a last-minute sub-plan. So it was a really awesome thing that I got to do with my classes. Very low behavior management, the teachers and students really liked it. At the time we were actually learning about Earth and space. So this was actually a good connection with my K through five classes. It wasn't completely random. It was something that we were currently learning, and so it really tied it all together at this virtual assembly. Also, bonus points on this, if you do this a week before a break, like spring break, winter break, or a long weekend, your classroom teachers are gonna love you even more. So I highly recommend this and definitely going to do this again for my school. And just again, another cool way for kids to learn from people in the STEM field. 

Naomi Meredith  10:54

As a recap, here are three classroom guest speaker ideas that you can use in your STEM classroom. First, you can have experts come in to build connections to class projects that you're working on. Next, you can host a STEM career day. And third, you can set up a school-wide virtual or in-person assembly. I hope that all these ideas are getting your wheels turning and that you can make these bigger connections and experiences for your students with the projects that you're hosting in your class. Again, I don't want you to feel limited by all the details when it comes to setting this up. It's not as hard as you think. That's why I co-collaborated with Sam Labs. We created that checklist for you to help you get set up with getting an expert in your class, the whole process from start to finish, and really bring these experiences to life. So grab that checklist in the show notes. Also, make sure to listen to the next episode, where I am getting interviewed by Shauna Douglas from Sam Labs. We're going to talk more in detail about how this expert experience was set up at my school and other cool and relevant opportunities that you can do in your classroom. So I will see you there in the next episode.