Team Building with STEM Stations
STEM Stations are a wonderful way to promote team building, creativity, problem solving, and collaboration skills for Back to School and beyond. Not to mention, they are quick and easy to prep, requiring simple STEM Bins® materials that I already have in my classroom! I use my STEM Bins® Teambuilder Stations in my Gifted and Talented classes with multiple grade levels at the beginning of the school year, as well as throughout the year with seasonal STEM stations. These STEM activities are easy to differentiate for multiple abilities and are guaranteed to keep my little ones engaged with simple, play-based engineering tasks. They’re a favorite in my classroom year after year!
Benefits of STEM Stations
Here are a few of the many reasons I LOVE using STEM Teambuilder Stations in my classroom:
When to Use STEM Stations
STEM Stations are appropriate for classroom teachers, STEM teachers, media specialists, Makerspace teachers, and more! You can use them at the beginning and end of the year, for Fun Fridays, Fall Parties, Winter Parties, or Valentine’s Day Parties. There are so many creative ways to implement STEM Stations in your schedule. Here are a few popular ways that teachers like to utilize them:
STEM Stations Set-Up
Teaching STEM to multiple grade levels usually means LOTS of prep, and one of my favorite things about STEM Teambuilder Stations is that they are SO quick and easy to prep! Just dump your STEM Bins® materials on trays or in tubs, set up instruction cards, copy student recording booklets, spread them out around the room, and you’re good to go! This also makes clean-up much quicker because students simply put all materials back on the trays.
I typically set up four STEM stations per day and have my students rotate to two stations with 20-30 minutes per station. The following class session, they’ll visit the remaining two STEM stations. If you would prefer smaller groups of students, you may choose to set up 6-8 stations for student to rotate through. In my experience, 2-4 students per group is ideal.
Here’s a video of me prepping four of my Back to School STEM Teambuilder Stations. Easy Peasy!
One of my favorite things about my Back to School STEM Stations is that there is also a character focus for each station. You may choose to highlight a different character skill daily or weekly, and can then display the cards in your classroom. There are two differentiated options for recording/reflection sheets: upper grades and lower grades.
There are also optional reward certificates included to recognize students’ character:
STEM Stations in Action
And now it’s time to engineer, create, and collaborate! Check out my Back to School STEM Bins® Teambuilders in action:
Back to School and End of the Year STEM Stations
Ready to dive in with STEM Stations?! My original STEM Bins® Teambuilders are perfect for Back to School and the End of the Year, but they can also be implemented any time of year!
STEM Stations All Year Bundle
My students loved our Back to School Stations so much that I decided to create Teambuilders for every season! Check out out my Teambuilders All Year Bundle:
Fall and Halloween STEM Stations
Winter and Holiday STEM Stations
