STEM Resources

This Mark Twain Physical Science book encourages your students to collaborate while solving real-world science problems.

Filled with 26 hands-on activities, the STEM Labs for Physical Science book challenges students to apply content knowledge, technological design, and scientific inquiry to solve problems. Topics covered include:

• matter
• motion
• energy

This physical science book correlates to current state standards.

Cultivate an interest in science, technology, engineering, and math by encouraging students to collaborate and communicate for STEM success. STEM Labs for Physical Science includes lab activities to motivate students to work together, and it also provides you with materials for instruction and assessment. Labs incorporate the following components:

• critical thinking
• teamwork
• creativity
• communication

Mark Twain Media Publishing Company creates products to support success in science, math, language arts, fine arts, history, social studies, government, and character. Designed by educators for educators, the Mark Twain Publishing product line specializes in providing excellent supplemental books and content-rich décor for middle-grade and upper-grade classrooms.

STEM Challenges for grades 2-5 provides a fun way to enhance STEM learning in the classroom. This boxed set includes 30 challenge cards—10 each for the three categories of physical science, life science, and earth and space science. Designed to capture a student's attention, challenges are diverse, simple, and easy to complete and include these fun activities: creating structures and bridges, experimenting with camouflage, learning how to dig for "fossils," and more.

Help students go full STEAM ahead with grab-and-go activities! STEM Challenges offers an engaging way to get students interested in science, technology, engineering, art, and math. Each challenge card features two sides—the front side includes the challenge and a visual list of materials needed to complete the challenge. The back of the card is ideal for extended learning and includes hints, questions, and explanations of the science behind the challenge. Each activity uses common materials and can be completed individually or during whole-class instruction.

STEM Challenges helps teachers integrate STEM into the classroom by providing hands-on activities that appeal to students. Because of the child-friendly text and the visual materials lists, these easy, but fun, activities can be completed independently, in small groups, or as a whole-class activity. The activities require common materials so students or teachers can "grab and go!” Don't forget to check out the Seasonal STEM Challenges set for more fun ways to learn STEM.

Science, technology, engineering, art, and math work together to make learning fun in these STEAM lessons!

Perfect for Makerspace!

This second grade teacher resource book includes:

• A year's worth of teacher lesson plans
• STEAM design challenges that turn elementary students into inventors
• Easy-to-follow lesson format (with standards identified for each lesson)
• Classroom-tested lessons

The STEAM Design Challenges in this book follow engineering practices to teach students in Grade 2 to solve a problem by designing, creating, and justifying their designs. They also allow art to support and enhance the learning of science and math while the engineering process is followed.

These engaging STEAM lessons:

• Integrate the Next Generation Science Standards and national standards from other disciplines
• Enhance learning across various disciplines
• Facilitate students in collaborating to solve real-world scenarios
• Promote critical thinking, analytical thinking, and reflective thinking
• Incorporate the Five Es Instructional Model (engage, explore, explain, elaborate, evaluate)
• Are classroom tested

Engineering Design Process
The lessons in this book are intended to support the engineering design process in which teachers become a facilitator by encouraging and guiding students to work as a team to find a creative solution to a real-world problem without providing step-by-step instructions. Students are inspired to act as scientists and engineers through the use of sketches, diagrams, mathematical relationships, and literacy connections. By creating their very own models and products based on background information from their studies, students are immediately engaged through a meaningful, rewarding lesson.

More about the lessons
Each lesson begins by presenting students with a design challenge scenario in order to immediately excite students with a real-world situation that they are on a mission to solve. Students are then given a dilemma, mission, and blueprint design sheet and are asked to collaborate with team members to create several prototypes. Students present their prototypes to their teacher, construct their design, test their design, engage in a class discussion about their design, and then modify their design. Finally, teams create a justification piece in order to sell their new prototype (ex. persuasive letter, video, advertisement etc.).

About the Authors
The Steam Dreamers, a group of four classroom teachers, desired to create more interactive learning environments and science classrooms through student-centered problem-solving lessons. They created this collection of cross-curricular design challenge lessons to provide teachers and students with real-world scenarios that are driven by core learning standards and enriched through the inclusion of literacy and the arts.