STEM Activities for the Classroom

Today, we’ve put together a list of fantastic STEM activities you can do with your students that can be tailored to their learning needs.

All the activities practise elements of STEM (particularly engineering) and involve materials which are either very easy and cost-effective to get hold of, or you already have them in your classroom.

Let’s go through the activities and see if they will work for you…

 

Plastic Cup Tower

For this challenge, you’ll simply need a HUGE number of plastic cups!

To start the activity, discuss with your students what makes a group work well together. Then divide your class up into groups of four or five and tell them that the challenge is to make the tallest tower they can with the plastic cups provided.

With this challenge, your students will be able to work together, come up with a plan and then experience why it’s important to listen to others and hear their ideas.

You can bring the class back together at the end to discuss what you learnt and what worked best to build the tallest tower.

 

Build a Newspaper Tower

This activity not only encourages students to work together, but it also means students learn about how best to use a newspaper to make a strong tower.

To do it, split the class up into groups of four. You’ll need around two sheets of newspaper and 12 inches of tape per group.

Explain to the students that they have to make the tallest tower they can with the materials provided without taping it to the table or floor or using these to support it.

At the end of the activity, you could walk around each table discussing the heights and measuring which group has the tallest tower.

 

Pipe Cleaner Tree

Again, this task requires engineering and critical thinking skills. Students can take their time to find the best solution with it and it’s flexible for your teaching needs too – you could make it a simple five minute task or longer.

Split your students into groups of about three and give each group nine or so pipe cleaners, and ask them to build a tree (just the structure) that stands on its own and is one-foot tall.

At the end of the task, you can see which groups have succeeded and why they think they did.

Tip! You can turn this into a festive activity too for the upcoming season by asking your students to build a festive tree with green pipe cleaners.

 

Do you have any fun STEM activities you do in your class? We’d love to hear them! Tweet them to us @EducationCity!