Despite it not being mentioned in any of the curriculum subjects, STEM is everywhere! STEM stands for Science, technology, engineering and maths and it is a way that primary school teachers can integrate the subjects of science and maths using the skills of ed technology and engineering.
I think teachers are interested in STEM and how it might look in the primary classroom. With this in mind, Prim-Ed have made a dinky, colourful box of STEM activities for all classes to use. I received an Infants’ box to review. Each box is made up of 4 different colour-coded sections. These are living Things; Energy and Forces; materials; and Earth and the Environment. We can see how SESE and the Ethical Education curriculum (taught in Educate Together schools) can be focussed on with these sections.
The cards contain explanation on what STEM education is with ideas for planning, differentiation, examples of children’s work and resource management within the classroom.
Each card is designed to be child-friendly and to help to the learner design and create their own STEM projects. There are also cards for the teacher with an overview of the activities on each card. They also contain a range a of shorter-term projects and longer-term projects which will suit the teacher and child who want to extend project learning in their class and perhaps bring into their homework learning. Each activity is replicated onto six cards for six separate children/groups to use as well.
The activities are simple to teach and also challenging enough to help the child think about their learning. They use a “design and create” emphasis their creative minds are put to work as well.
Having said that, the Infants box might need to be adapted and explained whole-class for Junior or Senior Infants as I would guess that a lot of infants could not independently read the tasks and/or carry them by themselves. But, don’t let this put you off as I found myself using the ideas for the STEM activities easily in my class by discussing first and setting clear outcomes for the class.
The STEM projects from Prim-Ed are available for all class levels from Infants to 6th Class and they will really help a school in looking at finding out how to implement a STEM based skills approach to maths and science using technology and engineering. Prim-Ed are awfully kind and they have offered a lucky Mash.ie winner to choose a box from their chosen class level. The boxes are worth 60 euro so a big thank you as usual to the very creative and generous Prim-Ed folk!
As part of this review process, I have been allowed to keep the STEM projects box and am getting great use out of it. I am very excited for any teacher who gets to win this resource worth €60!
The STEM projects is priced at 59 and you can find it here at https://www.prim-ed.ie/shop/stem-projects-infants/. You can find the other boxes for the remaining classes 1st-6th Class on the new Prim-Ed website too.
All Mash.ie subscribers automatically get entered into the competition. Fill in your email address below to be in with a chance. Entries close at 7pm on November 11th 2018.