Search This Blog

Monday, September 14, 2015

Getting Students Excited About STEM Careers

I am now several weeks into teaching 6th grade math!  I came into the school year a few weeks late and I feel like I haven't stopped running around frantically, but it has been worth every exhausting second!  One of my big focuses this year in math is WHY?  Ms. McNichols, WHY do we have to learn this?  I try to put every math term and equation into a real-life scenario for the students.  For example:  Why learn about greatest common factors (GCF) and least common multiples (LCM)?  So you don't end up like this guy!



However, beyond the every day examples, I want to start getting students excited about using math as a career and following a passion into a STEM  (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) career.  Enter my STEM board!




I found these educational posters at my local teacher supply store and decided to make them into one of my classroom themes. Every month I will focus on a new STEM career and try to incorporate a different project that directly relates to this career.  This month we started with Aerospace Engineers.  I simply searched Aerospace Engineers in google images and chose some visually stimulating photographs to peak my students' curiosity!  AND it just so happens that I know a couple fellas who used to work at NASA, so we are going to have a video conference with one of them at the end of the month to get the students excited about all the places math can take them...like to the moon and beyond ;)




Stay tuned to see what we focus on next month :)

Happy teaching y'all!