What Should I Do With My ESSER Funding?

One of the most common themes we have heard circulating in our industry over the last few months is the idea of learning loss.  After the year that we have had with children being out of school across the world for different durations of time it is a valid concern. As we all know, every child learns differently, meaning some students felt the effects of learning from home more so than others.  At WhyMaker this is why we believe in the power of STEM and Project Based Learning to help combat and improve learning loss. Inside this article you will find our thoughts on why STEM & PBL can help move students towards more learning and some tools you can begin to use in your classrooms to facilitate this.

Safety & Security

STEM & Design thinking also help build community in your classroom. In these types of learning experiences students have a lot of freedom to express themselves and have a lot of opportunity to feel success. We know that students learn better when they feel safe and secure and this is what happens during a STEM & PBL project.

Consistency = More Chances to Learn

Through STEM and PBL learning students practise math, ELA and science concepts over and over again through the design process. This gives them multiple opportunities to practise important learning concepts. Having many different opportunities to practice learning concepts helps to solidify ideas and processes in students minds allowing them to retain more information as well as creates a solid understanding of concepts.

Collaboration

Through the isolating quarantine events, students have not had as many opportunities to collaborate with each other. STEM and PBL projects naturally require students to collaborate. When students are working together to solve problems they are acting like engineers, designers and scientists. They have to take the opinion, desires and ideas of their peers and combine them together to create one unified thing. This is a skill that helps humankind survive and a skill we need to teach our students everyday. This is so easily and naturally done through STEM projects.

Rigor

There were major stressors placed on everyone during the pandemic. To help our students cope we did many things to decrease student struggle and the feeling of overwhelming. This has made some students feel like they cannot or do not want to take on challenges. STEAM challenges are a great way to slowly build students' endurance to do more and more rigorous work. Check out new posted design challenges HERE.

 

Resources & Products to help support your students

Below you will find some of WhyMaker’s favorite resources and products to use in your classroom to help you create a successful STEM or PBL project.

Design Planner

The design planner will help you to plan great projects for your student. A Design Thinking unit that starts with empathy and ends with students creating a solution to a problem they see in the world. The Designing for Humans Project Planner is the best new planner tool out there. It combines the engineering design process with empathy based design thinking to set up a great workflow for your students to work through to be successful. Teachers from all over the world can use this organizer to help create meaningful, engaging projects with their students. The role of the teacher is shifted in their project planner from giver of knowledge to learning engineer constructing learning experiences for students. Designing for Humans is a project based learning method to give students engaging and meaningful experiences in their classrooms.  

Online Course

WhyMaker’s “Ultimate Guide to Maker Ed” online course will give you tons of great ideas and tips about running a hands-on classroom. If you are ready to transform your teaching so students have meaningful experiences within the school day, this is the most important professional development course for you. The WhyMaker Way is the next biggest thing in STEM education. You see those STEM teachers who are rockstars; where the students come running into their classroom and they are always creating amazing things and the administration is always bragging about them... Well with the WhyMaker Way, you can learn from me how to be one of those teachers.

 

STEM Products

Edison Robots are so easy to use students have success so quickly.

Edison is a programmable robot designed to be a complete STEM teaching resource for coding and robotics education for students from 4 to 16 years of age.

The Edison robot is a powerful, engaging tool for teaching kids computational thinking and computer programming in a hands-on way.

With more built-in sensors than any robot in its class as well as lights, sounds and autonomous behaviour capabilities, Edison makes true robotics education accessible to students of all ages.

WhyMaker even has its own Edison Facebook group for raving fans — it’s that popular!

3dux Design was created to bring out the creator and maker in every child!  3dux design doesn't come with instructions so students are free to build whatever they desire. 3dux creates challenges that allow students to work on real world problems, challenging them to be more creative and innovative in their solutions!

Makey Makey allows students to connect the physical world to the computer world to make silly and meaningful things. With Makey Make you can turn everyday objects like bananas into touchpads, connect the world around you to your computer! Setup takes just seconds, all you have to do is plug, clip, and play! No programming knowledge needed. No software to install. Works with Mac and Windows. 1000s of possibilities! Draw your own game controller, sneak a cat selfie, and dance like never before.

Kai's Clan is a collaborative coding platform that encompasses several technologies into an all-in-one learning platform. Kai’s Clan incorporates Robotics, Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI)  into one easy to use platform. Allowing children to engage in multiplayer collaborative coding Kai’s Clan builds a highly educational STEAM experience by combining augmented reality technology with robots driving on a physical adventure mat.

If you have been wondering what to do with your ESSER funding it is time to consider incorporating more STEM & PBL activities into your classroom. There is no better time than now to invest into creating great STEM and PBL projects for your students. Once you have successfully completed one project with your students you won’t be able to stop!

Book a time with Liz to chat about your needs and how WhyMakers professional development can help to mitigate learning loss by working with educators to create safe, supported learning rich environments for students. We can help your educators so students will thrive this summer and in the new school year.  

WhyMaker is a Women-Owned Small Business in the State of New York that works with all sorts of schools and organizations around the world to improve STEM and Project Based Learning in our schools. We are eager to learn about what you are doing and how we can support you.