Posted by on February 24, 2016

STEMgEMSThis month’s STEM Gems experience is all about baseball. Baseball science, that is! Through the use of frozen baseballs, your afterschool students will learn about the concepts of flexibility, movement and impact recovery.

STEM Gems are short discovery-based experiences. They involve little or no materials and may be easily implemented by educators who are not STEM specialists. Each STEM Gem is designed to engage young people
in active experiential learning. The activities begin by setting up connections to prior knowledge, then a hands on activity provides new concepts and the opportunity to design experiments to answer any questions the kids discover. Finally, a connection to a different scenario for the concept is provided to help cement and evaluate the learning.

STEM Gems are experiences are designed to be used with kids of all ages. Younger children should be focused on one idea or concept and should perform the activity as a collective group with prompts and directions from the teacher. With older youth, the teacher should act as a facilitator. The older youth should be set up to work independently in small teams and encouraged to ask questions and try out their own experiments to answer them. Each team should report back on their findings, so a consensus around the concept is reached.

Each STEM Gem is presented in an easy to follow lesson plan:

Big Ideas and Science Talk  •  Engage  •  What You Will Need  •  Before You Begin  •  Explore and Experiment  •  Make the Connection and Extend and Evaluate

Click here to download additional information about these experiences.

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E-mail: info@miafterschoolassociation.org | Tel. 269-337-0707

MAA Office:

125 W Exchange Place, Kalamazoo MI 49007