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Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wes Fryer

Category: stem

  • Rocket Time! (an iPhone iMovie Trailer)

    This evening our family launched water bottle rockets! The last two weeks my 4th and 5th grade STEM students have been building and launching them, and this week my wife is going to build and launch them with her 3rd and 4th graders at Positive Tomorrows. This was her opportunity to have a hands-on lesson…

  • Learning and Recovering From Failure in STEM Class

    Today in my last STEM class of the day the students and I had a magical moment. These don’t happen every day, and this will definitely “go down” in my personal memory bank as one of my highlights of the entire past year.   by  Wesley Fryer  This is the second week of we’ve built and launched…

  • Orientation Challenge in MinecraftEDU

    This is the next-to-last week of school for this academic year in our district, and I’ve been planning a final MinecraftEDU lesson for several months for my students that is ready at last. I wanted to create a scavenger hunt, and decided to focus on developing student knowledge and skills of the Minecraft coordinate grid…

  • Quick Edit Video: Water Bottle Rocket Launch

    Today my 4th and 5th grade STEM students launched water bottle rockets they built earlier in the week, and this provided the first opportunity for me to use the “slow motion video” option in my T-Mobile iPhone 5S. This video from this morning became our “what not to do” video about standing near water puddles.…

  • iPad Apps About Rockets, Spacecraft Design, and Astronomical Engineering

    This week my 4th and 5th grade STEM students are starting a two week unit on rocketry, spacecraft design and astronomical engineering. If that sounds too grandiose, here’s a simpler lesson plan explanation: We’re building and launching water bottle rockets using empty 2 liter soda bottles and a borrowed PITSCO “Aquaport II Water Rocket Launcher.”…

  • Great STEM Video for Architecture and Cantilever Spans Lesson

    Thanks to Brian Crosby, my 4th and 5th grade STEM students are in the midst of a mini-unit focusing on cantilever spans and architecture. Since our high stakes testing saga in Oklahoma of modified schedules is continuing this week, it’s good to have flexible lesson plans. After building the cantilever spans per Brian’s lesson suggestions,…

  • Fun Scratch Projects Today in STEM Class

    I’m continuing to teach my 4th and 5th graders in STEM class about coding and how to create projects using Scratch software. Last week students got started with coding using tutorials on Code.org. For our first lesson of this week students completed the “Step-by-Step Intro” to Scratch. I recorded a screencast of the instructions for…

  • STEM Curiosity Links: Episode 1 (A Touchcast Video)

    This afternoon after school, I used the free iPad app Touchcast to create my first “Curiosity Links” video. This is a short (5 minute) video sharing some websites and apps we discussed this week in STEM class to spark student curiosity. Check it out! Here are the links I referenced in the video and we…

  • 2 Challenges: With STEM & iPads

    There are a lot of challenges I face at school, but two stand out to me tonight. One concerns depth of learning with STEM content, and the other involves iPads and deep reflection. We finished the second day of a four-day unit on kitchen chemistry today, and after two and half months of using our…

  • First STEM seeds Show: Monday March 3, 2014

    STEM seeds (STEMseeds.org) is a teacher-created, non-commercial, free website and soon-to-be periodic podcast / webcast about STEM lesson ideas, links, and connections. The goal of STEM seeds is to amplify creative and engaging ideas for teaching and supporting STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education inside and outside the classroom. STEM seeds supports open education…