Summer School Science Activities

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This summer I taught a month of summer school for students in my school district. The summer school program focused on STEM & the topic "Under the Sea". I got to design 3 days of curriculum of my choice for 5th/6th grade students. I had 4 different groups of students (about 25 per class) and had each group for 3 days. Check out some of the ideas I implemented in my summer school classroom!

Build An Ecosystem

  • Students built an ecosystem in a jar and kept track of changes and temperature of their water over several days. 
  • I went to Petco and bought aquatic plants & sea gravel to put in the jars. My students needed help sticking the roots of the plants in the gravel 
  • The Elmer's Build a Boat Challenge is a fun project for students that places a price value on different materials and asks students to construct a boat that will be both economical and hold a lot of weight (I used marbles as weights.) 
  • I introduced the topic of buoyancy with a Billy Nye the Science Guy video  (because who doesn't like Bill Nye?!). 
  • Students liked the challenge of competing with other students to create the best boat. I was really proud especially of students who could only hold a few marbles at first and then ended up being hold 2X-3X as many marbles as their original trial! 
  • We talked about the importance of revising our ideas to make the boat design better after students noticed what worked and didn't work when they did their first test
Students building boat prototypes
Students testing to see how many marbles their boats can hold with our HS volunteer

Students drafting initial sketches for their boat design project

  • I bought this PBL STEM project on TPT from Kesler Science. I liked this STEM project because it introduced the topic of conservation and taking care of the environment. My students were all really surprised that there is a giant mass of trash in the ocean and we had great conversations about how to help the environment. In this project students build prototypes of machines that could help pick up trash from the ocean. 


    Students testing their trash pick up prototypes with our summer school TA 




    Students working with groups on their trash pick up prototypes 


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