What is STEM?! STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and math. What STEM is really about is higher level thinking and the thought processes that go into solving problems. With special education students, this can sometimes be a challenge as it is hard for them to put their thoughts into words. Though this poses a challenge, nothing can get past the magic of STEM bins. These bins are easily accessible to teachers and students. The teachers simply take crayon boxes and make small activities to go into them. These bins can be used at the beginning of the day as an icebreaker sort of method or simply when students finish work early and have extra time on their hands. Some simple activities to include in these bins are connecting the dots that leave the outline of a shape and then require the students to fill in the blank space to whatever they think the outline resembles. Another activity is to have legos in a box with different cards that show pictures to make. The students have to figure out how to assemble the legos to make them look like the picture. To provide one more example, shape pattern blocks are super easy and convenient. Provide cards that show which shapes are needed to make the figure and a picture of the figure itself. See if the students can follow the directions and create their version of the same picture. All of these STEM ideas are very simple and can be modified to make it easier for the special needs students to follow along as well. Overall, STEM bins don’t have to be so challenging that students have no idea how to complete the task at hand. Make sure your special needs students know that they can do the same tasks as your regular level students. Modify everything, but make sure they are still using logic and a valid thought process to figure things out.
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