STEM activities are supposed to be collaborative. Give students a challenge, put them into teams, hand out the materials, and watch them work together to solve the problem. At least, that’s how it goes in the lesson plan. In reality? One student grabs all the materials. Another insists their idea is the only idea. Someone…
STEM classroom management can get tricky the moment a hands-on challenge stops going according to plan. The tower collapses. The tape disappears. Someone insists, “You’re doing it wrong!” And suddenly a STEM lesson that started with excitement turns into frustration, tears, or an argument between teammates. If you teach STEM in an upper elementary classroom,…
It’s 8:15 on the first day of school. Twenty-two kids are standing in a room they’ve never been in, next to people they may or may not know, waiting for someone to tell them what to do. You’ve got a stack of blank nametags and fifteen minutes before your first real lesson starts. Here’s the…
We Have a New Name (and I Want to Tell You Why) Many years ago, I sat at my kitchen table creating my very first printables for a 3rd grade classroom, a simple hands-on STEM challenge with a sticky note rubric and a borrowed bin of recycled materials. I named my little shop “Live Laugh…
Classroom jobs have been around forever. Paper passer. Line leader. Pencil sharpener. Door holder. They help keep your classroom running smoothly, and students usually love having a special responsibility. But somewhere along the way, classroom jobs often become just another management system, a list of chores that gets rotated every week. What if classroom jobs…
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