Back to school STEM Stations are a great chance to practice your group work expectations and also build teamwork and community in your classroom at the beginning of the year. Students will use critical thinking, creativity, and engineering skills to complete the STEM stations. Stations Included: -Cup Stacking -Book Balance -Pencil Cup -Longest Paper Materials are simple to gather: disposable cups, measuring tape, ruler, paper, tape scissors, newspaper, and masking tape. This is a fun activity to use during the first week of school. (I wouldn’t necessarily do this on the first day as you are still building routines and classroom expectations, but it works well later in the first week or in the first month). These also make a great activity for open house! Since students will be “experts” at the challenges, they can have their parents try them. What is included? -detailed notes to teacher (3 pages) -extension idea -stations overview -example pictures- -recording booklet (includes spaces to sketch and record results, design challenge diagram, simple reflection, and group rubric) -station signs in 3 sizes (full page, 8x10, 4x6) How do you use this? You can set the stations up and have students rotate through one station each day, or have a larger chunk of your day devoted to completed the challenges in one day. Why Stations? I don’t always do stations with STEM, but I like to when I only have a limited number of materials. For example, to have 6-8 groups of students doing their own cup stack challenge at the same time, I would need to buy a lot of plastic cups, and that gets expensive!