STEM Resources

Did you know that robots are working in factories, hospitals, and even space? There are large robots, tiny robots, and robots that look like humans. They are all around us, solving problems and completing difficult and dangerous tasks. Read all about the people building robots as well as how robots work and how they may continue to develop in the future.

As part of the Searchlight Books collection, this series explores the latest and greatest in the world of technology. Fascinating text, vivid photos, and real-world examples bring these amazing breakthroughs to life!

Build Solo or Together!

Unique, connect-anywhere Brackitz attach to traditional planks at any angle, enabling builders of all ages to construct everything from small-scale builds to larger-than-life gravity-defying, 3-D structures - with their friends or alone - no limits. With plastic planks and rotating pieces, the Inventor 100 Piece Set is a great for larger builds and enables anyone to create builds with moving parts! Versatile, durable, and portable, award-winning Brackitz brings real-life art, math, science, architecture, and engineering principles into play.

Meet Botley, the code to fun! As the newest member of the Learning Resources family, Botley introduces coding in an easy, friendly way. Children as young as 5 can learn to code with Botley, and with his advanced features, he'll grow with them for many play-filled years to come. Botley is ready to use right out of the box – he'll have kids coding in minutes. And that's not all that makes Botley unique; he's 100% screen-free, and the only coding robot that includes a 77-piece activity set!

Here are just some of the fun interactive features Botley offers:
• Detect objects – and avoid them!
• Follow looping commands
• Navigate obstacle courses
• Follow black lines
Botley also has additional hidden features to unlock!

STEM Seasonal Challenges for grades 2-5 provides a fun way to enhance STEM learning in the classroom. This boxed set includes 30 challenge cards—each card is seasonally- or holiday-themed. Designed to capture a student's attention, challenges are diverse, simple, and easy to complete and include these fun activities: creating pumpkin catapults, making elf zip lines, designing pool floatation devices, and more!

Help students go full STEAM ahead with festive grab-and-go activities! Seasonal STEM Challenges offers an engaging way to get students interested in science, technology, engineering, art, and math. Each challenge card features two sides—the front side includes the challenge and a visual list of materials needed to complete the challenge. The back of the card is ideal for extended learning and includes hints, questions, and explanations of the science behind the challenge. Each activity uses common materials and can be completed individually or during whole-class instruction.

STEM Challenges helps teachers integrate STEM into the classroom by providing hands-on activities that appeal to students. Because of the child-friendly text and the visual materials lists, these easy, but fun, activities can be completed independently, in small groups, or as a whole-class activity. The activities require common materials so students or teachers can "grab and go!” Don't forget to check out the STEM Challenges set for more fun ways to learn STEM.

Science, technology, engineering, art, and math work together to make learning fun in these STEAM lessons!

Perfect for Makerspace!

This third grade teacher resource book includes:

• A year's worth of teacher lesson plans
• STEAM design challenges that turn elementary students into inventors
• Easy-to-follow lesson format (with standards identified for each lesson)
• Classroom-tested lessons

The STEAM Design Challenges in this book follow engineering practices to teach students in Grade 3 to solve a problem by designing, creating, and justifying their designs. They also allow art to support and enhance the learning of science and math while the engineering process is followed.

These engaging STEAM lessons:

• Integrate the Next Generation Science Standards and national standards from other disciplines
• Enhance learning across various disciplines
• Facilitate students in collaborating to solve real-world scenarios
• Promote critical thinking, analytical thinking, and reflective thinking
• Incorporate the Five Es Instructional Model (engage, explore, explain, elaborate, evaluate)
• Are classroom tested

Engineering Design Process
The lessons in this book are intended to support the engineering design process in which teachers become a facilitator by encouraging and guiding students to work as a team to find a creative solution to a real-world problem without providing step-by-step instructions. Students are inspired to act as scientists and engineers through the use of sketches, diagrams, mathematical relationships, and literacy connections. By creating their very own models and products based on background information from their studies, students are immediately engaged through a meaningful, rewarding lesson.

More about the lessons
Each lesson begins by presenting students with a design challenge scenario in order to immediately excite students with a real-world situation that they are on a mission to solve. Students are then given a dilemma, mission, and blueprint design sheet and are asked to collaborate with team members to create several prototypes. Students present their prototypes to their teacher, construct their design, test their design, engage in a class discussion about their design, and then modify their design. Finally, teams create a justification piece in order to sell their new prototype (ex. persuasive letter, video, advertisement etc.).

About the Authors
The Steam Dreamers, a group of four classroom teachers, desired to create more interactive learning environments and science classrooms through student-centered problem-solving lessons. They created this collection of cross-curricular design challenge lessons to provide teachers and students with real-world scenarios that are driven by core learning standards and enriched through the inclusion of literacy and the arts.