Reasons I Get Excited About STEM Challenges in Math

       STEM activities are all the rage, and my goal for this year is to make time for one STEM challenge each quarter this year.  I'll be honest, I'm fairly new to the STEM bandwagon.  Prior to 2016, I hadn't done any STEM challenges and I really had no plans to incorporate STEM in my classroom.  I figured that I had enough on my plate just trying to teach all of the stuff that was in my standards.

       That all changed in the summer of 2016 when I was privileged to attend Honeywell Educators at Space Academy.  Space Camp helped me realize that I not only need to teach my kids math skills.  I also need to help them see the exciting things that STEM can open up for them.  I need to help my students see themselves as people who are capable of using math as a tool solve problems.  So began my experience with STEM challenges.

     Over the last couple of years, I've found some STEM activities that really fit my needs.  This year, I plan to do a STEM challenge every quarter.  I've become a STEM challenge enthusiast, and here are the reasons why I love STEM challenges.

1.  STEM challenges are a great way for kids to really see the real world applications of math.  Let's face it....our textbooks try to use story problems to accomplish this task, but they are often not successful.  The contexts in story problems are often too contrived to make students care about them.

The beauty of a STEM challenge, however, is that you are giving students a problem to solve.  As they complete the challenge, math can be one of the tools that they use to find and gauge their success.

2.   STEM challenges are a place to really show the need for precise measurements.  Measurement of a variable is often the key to determining success in a STEM challenge.  If the challenge is to build the tallest pipe cleaner tower, accurate measurement is definitely a key.  In other STEM challenges, students must stay within given constraints.  For example, if you are only allowed to use 6 square inches of foil in your product, you will need to measure accurately for this.

3.  The need for correct labels is clear.  I was doing a STEM challenge last year where students had to build a shelf to hold as many quarters as possible.  They were given limitations for the size of the shelf, such as less than 6 square inches.  This STEM challenge really exposed my students' misunderstandings about the difference between inches and square inches.  Even better, it gave me a way to address this misunderstanding at a time that my students needed to know that information.

4.  STEM challenges are a great chance to introduce students to the power of spreadsheets.   STEM challenges often involve data collection, and this is a good way to incorporate the technology part of STEM.  Spreadsheets are a great way to collect the data. What a great way to introduce students to the power of a spreadsheet than with a bunch of data that they collected!  Last year we did a STEM pipe cleaner challenge, and there were so many excited students when I showed them that they could enter the calculations once and the spreadsheet could do all of the calculating for them.   In the real world that we live in, much of the math that we need can be automated with a spreadsheet.  It is so important for students to begin to see that math isn't always about doing the calculations yourself, but sometimes about knowing how to get a computer to do them for you!

5.  STEM challenges are a great way to work on a variety of math concepts.  Many STEM challenges involve measurement, data collection, and data analysis.  For many STEM challenges, however, the math part stops with these things.  However, I've found ways to incorporate many other topics:

• Area, surface area, and volume:  STEM challenges often involve creating some object, so I've found that I can often incorporate area, surface area or volume.  I did a STEM challenge last year where students had to build a diving pool for a daredevil high-diver (pencil cap erasers!).  After the challenge, students had to find the surface area and volume of their pool to see who had the pool with the least surface area.
• Percent change:  This works especially well if you give students a chance to improve their original creation.  For example, lots of STEM challenges involve students building tall towers.  I've seen these with spaghetti and marshmallows, pipe cleaners, cups, or even balloons!  To incorporate percent change, have the students complete the original project and measure their tower.  Then give them time to make revisions, or wait until another day and have them try again.  Then students can compare the percent change between the first and second attempt.
• Ratios:  I did one STEM challenge where students had to build a tower from candy and toothpicks.  The catch was that they were assigned a particular ratio of candy to toothpicks that they had to use. 
• Equations and inequalities:  I've found there are often ways to incorporate equations and inequalities into a STEM challenge.  Let's say your STEM challenge is for students to build a tower that is at least 12 inches tall.  Why not use this to introduce the idea of writing inequalities?  Or you could have all students put their tower heights on a number line, and introduce the idea of graphing inequalities.  When we built our candy/toothpick towers, we wrote equations relating the number of toothpicks to candy.

6.  STEM challenges are a great way to teach a growth mindset.  STEM challenges are all about trying things out and making adjustments to make things work better.   During a STEM challenge, it is no big deal to have something not work and try something different.  What a great opportunity for teachers to reinforce the power of learning from our mistakes to figure out better solutions or understandings.  I take any chance I can to reinforce the power of learning from our mistakes with my students.  

7.  STEM challenges are great for those random days that you don't know what to do with.  You know what I'm talking about....that 2 day week before Thanksgiving when you don't want to start something new.  Or that day when fourteen kids have the flu and you don't want them to miss the lesson that is such a foundation for your unit.  STEM challenges are great to fill in these random days, and yet still be focused on math.

8.  STEM challenges are great to engage all different kinds of students.  Kids love doing hands-on stuff and even my most reluctant math students will dive into a STEM challenge.

9.  They're fun!   We get so worried about teaching standards and finishing everything that sometimes the fun gets lost.  It's nice to hear the fun and excitement of a STEM day!  It's nice to hear kids in the hall talking about how much fun math is today.  It's nice to have kids still talking about something you did in class a week later.

10.  STEM challenges are a great way to get kids collaborating.  I always have my students work in groups on STEM challenges.  STEM challenges are a great way to get kids exchanging ideas, and incorporating ideas from many students.  This is a great way to work on "soft skills"!

What is your favorite STEM activity to do in math class?  Comment below!

Celebrating National STEM Day by Putting the M in STEM

    November 8 was National STEM Day.  When a colleague came in my room a couple of days before that to ask what I was going to do for National STEM Day....I'll be honest.  My first thought was, "I'm so far behind my pacing guide....I can't afford to do ANYTHING!".  But as I sat and thought about it, I came to the same conclusion I've come to several times since attending Space Camp....my job is not only to teach kids math skills, but to inspire them to want to learn math.  My job is to show them that math could be a part of their future, and that it could be a good thing.

     So I decided that I would do a STEM activity, because my students needed that chance to be creative, and work collaboratively, and do so many other things that STEM can do in the classroom.  And I did work in some important math from my standards (even if it wasn't exactly what my pacing guide said I should be doing!).

     The challenge for my students this time:  To build a tower with a shelf at the top that could hold at least two quarters.  Students had a limited amount of "credits" to spend, and they got bonus points for unspent credits.  They also got bonus points if their tower could hold more than two quarters.  Each group had to draw three cards that guided their building.  The cards had inequalities that gave students criteria they had to meet for tower height, base area and shelf area.

       

      I don't know about your students, but in 7th grade, many of my students still struggle with inequality symbols.  There were many discussions throughout the day about the meaning of the cards.  "Does this mean our tower can be 5 inches, or does it have to be taller?"  "Does the area of the base have to be more or lesss than 6 square inches?"  "How big is 3 square inches?"  I find the open-ended activities like this are a great chance for formative assessment for me, if I listen to the students having conversations with each other.  For this lesson, I could definitely tell that many of my students didn't fully understand inequality symbols, as well as the difference between inches and square inches.

     After a short introduction, my students ended up with about 30 minutes to work on this STEM challenge.  That seemed to be just about the right amount of time.  Because students got extra points for unspent credits, they were very careful about material use.  That was one nice thing about this STEM challenge....the materials ended up being really cheap!  The things I had available were graph paper, index cards, tape, staples, straws, foil (cut in 2" squares) and pipe cleaners.

     My student creations were AMAZING!  I had one group that used a single piece of paper, and built a 5 inch tower that held 15 quarters.  I had groups in every hour that build towers so sturdy that 30 quarters wasn't enough to topple them (I realized in 1st hour that I had to put a limit on how many extra points they could get for sturdiness....one group of boys built a tower that held 5 huge library books and still hadn't toppled!).  Students were engaged, creative, and working hard....STEM for the win!

     The next day, I used this as a chance to teach kids how to graph inequalities on the number line.  In each class, I had a handful of students that remembered learning this in 6th grade, but the majority did not.  Using the cards from the STEM challenge, student quickly understood how to graph inequalities.   I feel like this made it well worth it to have take the time to do the STEM challenge.

If you're interested in this Inequality STEM Challenge lesson, you can get it at my TpT store.
   

Where is Space Camp Taking Me?

           Space camp was such an amazing experience....one that I know will never be duplicated.  I can (and have) gone on and on about all of the awesome experiences I had at Space Camp, but as amazing as it was, I have to come back and make changes that my students can see for it to make a difference for anyone but me.  It can't just be a cool experience that I recount for them.  In some way I have to find my own way to bring that excitement to my math classroom.  

     Obviously this is not something that is accomplished overnight.  Almost three weeks into school, I want to pause and take a minute to think...how am I bringing Space Camp back to my classroom?  From day one, I have definitely shared my excitement with kids.....telling them about it, showing them pictures. 

 I wore my flight suit and talked about my newfound passion for space.  I showed them a video clip of Kennedy, talking about the going to the moon, "not because it is easy, but because it is hard".  We talked about setting goals worthy of being hard, and we've talked about where the US space program is now.

      But what else.....because that is not enough. I came away from Space Camp realizing I needed to help my kids see all the cool pathways that math and science could open up for them, rather than just teaching them math and hoping the inspiration comes from somewhere else.  

        So for the first time, I collaborated with the science teacher on my team to do a STEM challenge.  Last week, kids built pipe cleaner towers in science, and recorded the height. This week, kids repeated this activity in my class and recorded their tower height from science versus the second attempt in my class.  It took all of 20 minutes, and next week I have real data that the kids collected and that they care about available to use to talk about measures of center and measures of variability.

Kids hard at work.

Love this pic....shows that big smile while working!

   

We are also going to talk about percent change as we compare their trials.  For just 20 minutes of fun (and problem solving and collaboration), I have a great intro to teach all this stuff I needed to teach anyways.  Plus, I hope that activities like this will help bring in some of my kids that don't love math and don't think they're good at math....maybe things like this will crack the door open for a few students to find some enjoyment in math and science, that didn't have that before.  Because my winning groups weren't necessarily the kids that usually excel in math...but yesterday they did.  And they had fun at the same time!    If you're interested in the lesson plan for this from my store, click here.

This simple design was one of the tallest towers, at 53 cm.  The winning tower was 53.5 cm.

         This  STEM challenge is also a good time to introduce the kids to the new "teams" they will be working with for the rest of the quarter.  Instead of table 1,  table 2, and so on, I now have teams Harmony, Unity, Tranquility, Kibo, Zarya,and Columbus (Space Camp team names, after parts of the International Space Station).  One of the ambassadors at camp gave us this idea....make teams that cross over hours to build up the idea of teamwork.    Teams collected points for how their team placed in our pipe cleaner challenge. Who knows.....maybe there will even be a Commander's Cup to award the winning team (this is the award my team, team Columbus, won at camp).    

    

Team Columbus, with our Commander's Cup patches!

      Another awesome thing is that after doing this STEM challenge together, the science teacher and I already have several more things planned together.....investigating claims on GrowBeasts and Double Stuff Oreos, planning a Martian Day as our team day for the last day before winter break.  Plus more collaborative STEM challenges for us in future quarters!  I can't tell you how excited I am about all of these things, and I just know the kids will love it too!

     So this is where Space Camp has taken me so far, with high hopes for many more changes to come!

FYI:  My fantastic Space Camp adventure was possible because of my new favorite company, Honeywell, as I was part of Honeywell Educators Space Academy.  This amazing program paid my way to Space Camp, and applications are open now for next year!  If you teach middle school math or science, you should apply!!

Whole Class Participation Techniques

         As this school year begins, I've been excited about how my classes have been taking shape so far.  The kids are great, and the classroom is starting to feel like community.  We're all starting to get to know each other a bit, and the kids are starting to understand my expectations.
          I read a book over the summer about total participation techniques.  I was really excited about this idea of getting every kid to answer questions, rather than just one kid.  So as I started planning for building my classroom climate, this was one of my major considerations.  I really wanted to utilize technology in a way to increase whole class participation whenever possible.  These have been the things that I've been really pleased with in the first two weeks when it comes to increasing class participation.

1. Go Formative--I was introduced to GoFormative as one of the sessions at Space Camp this summer and thought it had potential.  I tried it last week and loved it!  I have used online quizzes on Google forms or quia, but what is different about Go Formative is that you are seeing data real-time (not just when kids finish).  And not only can you see it real-time, you can send kids individual feedback, and they can make corrections based on the feedback you sent them.  So here was a sample question:

The answer I was wanting was that students disagreed, because the numbers were not in order.    

Here is an example interaction between one student and myself.

The student's initial response (which you can't see because he fixed it) was "agree", so I sent him the first message about "What do you do first?"  This helped him realize the numbers weren't ordered, and he then changed his answer simple to "disagree".  However, I also wanted students to justify their answer, so I sent the second message about "Why do you disagree?", leading to his final response.
            I was impressed with how powerful these interactions were, and look forward to using this tool more in my classroom!

2.  Desmos--I have written before about being a big fan of Desmos, but this week as I used it as a way to encourage whole class participation and formative assessment.  We were doing one of my favorite lessons, one about students who are going into business together.  My class has to analyze the business plans in terms of how much money each partner initially has, and how much they save each week.  It's a great activity to teach distributive property, combining like terms,  and the appearance of linear functions with positive/negative slope.  I have always loved this lesson, but Desmos added something to it.  We did most of the lesson on paper, and then I used just a few Desmos questions for real-time formative assessment.

I love being able to see everyone's response to a question on one screen.  I also like being able to quickly show several different strategies for determining whose graph it was, while highlighting student work.  It was fantastic!

3.  Response Cards--This was my low-tech whole class participation technique...but still effective.  We were having a debate about a question I had on the board, so I had students take out the "agree, disgree, or not sure" cards. I was able to get a quick feel for the mood of the class, as well as who might present arguments for each side to further our discussion.  Quick, easy method for formative assessment!  (You can get these response cards free at my Teachers Pay Teacher store, by the way)

4.  Google Questions on classroom--I really enjoyed using the question function on Google Classroom.  I played a video which showed a visual representation of mean, and then asked students to respond as a Google Question whether they thought the video represented mean, median or mode.  Again, quick, easy formative assessment.  Some classes got it right away, and that was great.  Other classes were split down the middle at first, but after viewing the responses in the question, every class quickly concluded that is was mean

The whole interaction probably only took 10 minutes, and it was extremely effective!

5.  Kahoot--This is certainly not a new one to me, as I used Kahoot frequently last year as well.  This year, I'm trying to refine a few things about Kahoot.  A couple of things I'm planning to incorporate in my Kahoots this year are spiraling review and trivia. I want to add just a couple of spiral review questions to every Kahoot, just to keep skills sharp.  And the trivia is just for fun...the kids love knowing that every now and then I'll throw in something random just for fun!
       I also love to use Kahoot to teach error analysis, and trying to get the kids to figure out what error had to be made to get the incorrect answers.