science Archives - Teacher's Brain

The Top 3 Benefits of STEM Activities in Elementary

November 3, 2023 teachersbrain Science, STEM, Teacher's Pay Teachers, Teaching Tips

Wondering about the benefits of STEM activities in elementary? You’re in the right place! If you know me, you know I love STEM activities and it’s so fun to see our young students light up when they are wrapped up and fully engaged in STEM learning.

What is STEM and why is it important?

STEM is essentially an integrated approach to learning that incorporates four key disciplines: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. These subjects are at the heart of many of the world’s most pressing challenges and exciting opportunities, so it’s important that we get our kiddos comfortable with it from an early age.

Here are some of the top benefits of STEM activities:

STEM Activities Foster Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving

STEM challenges are like brain-boosting exercises for our young learners. They help our students flex their thinking muscles by encouraging them to ask questions, explore solutions, and adapt their strategies when faced with hurdles. It’s all about honing those essential problem-solving skills that will serve them well in school and beyond.

Tip: To make this even more exciting, encourage your students to team up and work together. When they brainstorm and chat about their ideas, it can take their critical thinking skills to a whole new level!

Promotes a Love for Learning

Let’s make learning an adventure! STEM challenges turn the classroom into a place where students can have a blast while they learn. Children are naturally curious, and these activities tap into that curiosity. When kids are having fun, they’re more likely to remember what they’ve learned and develop a deep love for STEM subjects.

Tip: Choose challenges that match your students’ interests. Whether it’s building, experimenting, or exploring, let their passions lead the way. And don’t forget to weave in some fun stories and real-world examples to keep them engaged.

Builds Confidence and Resilience

Completing STEM challenges is a wonderful confidence booster! When students conquer obstacles and see their ideas come to life, they walk a little taller and believe in themselves, and what teacher wouldn’t love that?! Plus, they learn that mistakes are just stepping stones to success. That kind of resilience is a life skill that will stay with them long after they leave your classroom.

Tip: Celebrate every little success with your students. Emphasize the value of hard work and not giving up, even when things get tough. Encourage them to look back on their mistakes as opportunities to grow and do even better in the next challenge.

Looking for the perfect STEM challenge? Here are some super fun and engaging STEM challenges to try with your students:

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie STEM Challenge | Build a Mouse House

Be the teacher they remember with these engaging STEM Activities! Kids will have a blast learning about blueprints, floor plans, area, design, and writing while doing these activities! Use the book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff as a HOOK with this STEM activity! Check it out!

Apollo Lunar Module STEM Challenge

Are you looking for an engaging STEM Challenge to enhance your space unit or to teach how the first man landed on the moon? This is a great challenge for students to use materials to create a Lunar Lander module to test for a soft landing with their “shock absorbers.”

Building 2D & 3D Shapes Toothpick Cards, Activities and Challenges

Are you looking for some fun STEM ideas to incorporate into building math geometry skills with 2D and 3D Shapes? I have you covered with these Build A Shape Mats! Print and laminate. Students build it with toothpicks and molding dough (you can use marshmallows or gumdrops instead), count the toothpicks, sides, vertices, and trace the words!

I hope you love these activities and that your students have lots of fun with them! Looking for more tips for STEM learning? Check out my post here!

3 Effective Ways to Hold Students Accountable During Science

August 24, 2023 teachersbrain Teacher's Pay Teachers

Science education plays a crucial role in fostering curiosity and critical thinking in young minds. Kindergarten science lessons are the perfect opportunity to ignite this curiosity and lay the foundation for a lifelong love of learning. However, keeping kindergarten students engaged and accountable can be a challenge. We will explore three effective ways to hold students accountable during kindergarten science lessons, ensuring they actively participate and grasp the fundamental concepts.

1. Hands-On Experiments with Individual Responsibility

Kindergarten students learn best when they can interact with their environment. Incorporating hands-on experiments into science lessons not only captures their attention. To ensure accountability, assign each student a specific task within the experiment. For example, if the class is exploring the concept of sinking and floating, one student can be responsible for placing objects in water, while another observes and records the results.

By giving students individual responsibilities, they become accountable for their role in the experiment’s success. This approach promotes teamwork, builds a sense of ownership, and encourages active participation.

2. Interactive Group Discussions and Show-and-Tell

Kindergarten students love to share their thoughts and experiences. Leveraging this natural inclination, incorporate interactive group discussions into your science lessons. After introducing a new concept or conducting an experiment, gather the students and encourage them to express their observations, questions, and ideas.

To enhance accountability, designate a “show-and-tell” session where each student shares one thing they learned or found interesting during the lesson. This practice reinforces their understanding of the topic. It also fosters a sense of responsibility to contribute to the class’s learning environment.

3. Visual Journals, Interactive Notebooks, or Learning Logs

Kindergarten students are often more visually oriented learners. Introduce the concept of visual journals, interactive notebooks or learning logs early. This is where each student can document their scientific discoveries and reflections through drawings, short sentences, or even photographs. Provide prompts related to the lesson, such as “What did you learn today?” or “Draw a picture of the experiment we conducted.”

Regularly reviewing and discussing these journals in class allows you to gauge each student’s level of engagement and comprehension. It also gives them a personal sense of responsibility to document their learning journey and share their insights with their peers.

Grab this free energy download!

Bonus Tip: Celebrate Achievements

Incorporate a reward system to celebrate students’ achievements in understanding and participating during science lessons. This can be as simple as handing out stickers, small prizes, or certificates for active participation, insightful contributions, or successful completion of experiments. These rewards can act as positive reinforcement and motivate students to remain engaged and accountable in future lessons.

Grab the K-1 Science Yearlong Bundle

Free Activities for Teaching Forms of Energy

October 22, 2021 teachersbrain Science, Teacher's Pay Teachers

Teaching sound, light, and energy is an important part of early elementary education. Energy is all around us! The sun that shines down on us, the food we eat, the lights in our home. Understanding forms of energy is essential knowledge to have to understand the way the world works.

Getting our kindergarten, first, or second grade students to understand this concept can be really fun if done right!

When teaching with younger students, just remember to take it slow to start. This lesson can get a little overwhelming. Explain what energy actually is first, and then introduce examples (sound, heat, light).

After that, you can read some books on the topic of energy. This is a great way to add variety to your lesson and increase comprehension.

Then make it fun with science experiments! This is a great time for some hands-on learning. Think Diet Coke and Mentos eruptions or popsicle stick chain reaction activities. These are a great way to see forms of energy in motion.

For more tips for teaching forms of energy, check out my post here.

One of my favorite ways to do that is to use these free forms of energy activities.

These printable activities are easy and fun for kindergarten or first grade students.

Included in this free resource you’ll get:

HOME CONNECTION – Parent Project
Energy – List the items that produce energy
Heat & Light Energy Mini-book
I Spy SOUND objects
What is energy? POSTER

If you want more, you can check out the full resource here. It covers Sound, Heat, and Light with a 3-week plan including 3 inquiry lessons, data notebook pages, a rubric, a home project, and so much MORE!

These activities are great for helping your early elementary students really understand the topic of energy in a fun and engaging way! They will love learning and it will set them up for success in later grades.

What are your favorite ways to teach about forms of energy? Let me know in the comments!

Everything You Need To Survive Teaching Kindergarten

June 18, 2021 teachersbrain kindergarten survival, Teacher's Pay Teachers, Teaching Tips

It’s time to start preparing for the next school year! If you are a kindergarten teacher and you are ready to get ahead of the game this year and stop the lesson plan scramble once and for all, I have you covered.

I created a bundle that has everything you could possibly need to survive teaching kindergarten! You’ll get engaging activities to do with your students for every subject.

Here are the subjects included in this kindergarten bundle:

Monthly Writing Themed Journals
Morning Work Journals
Kindergarten Math Centers
Science
Social Studies
Guided Reading

Reading Curriculum

Teach students to read with these activities, lesson plans, and assessments over phonics, phonemic awareness, comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency. Your students will be confident in their reading by the end of the year.

Math Centers

Who doesn’t love math centers? In this resource you’ll get tons of math centers that cover counting, numbers, sorting and classifying, addition within 5, measurement and data, word problems, graphs and data, 2D and 3D shapes, teen numbers, comparing numbers, addition to 10, subtraction to 10, telling time, and money. Every kindergarten math topic is included at a center with task cards or worksheets to use with manipulatives.

Science Activities

Teach your students the wonders of science with these fun lesson plans, activities, and assessments! Topics covered include the scientific method, five senses, state of matter, energy, sound, and light, force and motion, push and pull, day and night, animal life science, plants, real vs. make-believe, weather, and sun, moon, and earth.

Social Studies

Teach students about American history, geography, community helpers, civics and government, money, and needs vs. wants with these lesson plans, activities, and assessments.

Kindergarten Writing Prompts

Get your students comfortable with writing with a full year’s worth of writing journals. You’ll get one journal for each month with writing prompts for each day. Never search for a grade-appropriate writing prompt again! As a bonus, you’ll also get my silly story starters!

Kindergarten Morning Work

Create a class routine and simplify your mornings with morning work activities. In this bundle, you will get morning work for each day of the school year. Activities included are letters, numbers, math, sight words, and more!

This bundle truly has everything you need. All that is left for you to do is teach. Your students will love these fun and engaging activities and they will be meeting standards with ease.

Check it out here!

Want more kindergarten tips? Check out my post on how to have a stellar first day of kindergarten here!