Home - Browne's Bunch of STEM

Hey I’m Meg!

A former Kindergarten Teacher turned Middle School Science Educator; I’m passionate about creating opportunities of growth through STEM Education.

I empower elementary teachers with the engineering design process, so that their students can apply researched scientific knowledge towards the solution of technical problems.

I believe STEM should be integrated into all subjects and cover more than just science skills and standards.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the Next Generation science standards?

The Next Generation Science Standards or NGSS for short are the set of K-12 standards for science. They are composed of three parts that have equal importantance: the science and engineering practices, the disciplinary core ideas, and the cross cutting concepts.

What does STEM teach our students?

STEM education goes beyond learning about science, technology, engineering, and math content. STEM also teaches students to collaborate, problem solve, develop grit and perseverance, and the belief that almost anything is possible if you can work hard enough for it.

What type of materials do i need for stem activities?

There are two ways you can go with this. I personally like recycled materials like paper towel rolls, bottle caps, newspaper, etc. But there are a lot of reusable materials too! I’d recommend a Lego set, magnetic tiles, and Keva planks for your classroom.

Why is stem important?

STEM is important for many reasons. It blends science, technology, engineering, and math together to create a well balanced activity/lesson. STEM jobs are going to make up a vast majority of jobs in the future and we need to prepare our students now for this.

How can i make stem a priority in my Daily schedule?

If your school is anything like mine (speaking of when I was in Kindergarten), there wasn’t a lot of time for science/social studies in the curriculum. If you’re like me, I had to build STEM into other subjects like math (carrying out investigations with measurements) or reading (picture books with an engineering problem to fix after we finished reading). In this way, I was able to develop the important science and engineering processes into other subject matter.

How Should I organize my stem materials?

I created a Makerspace to store all of my materials that I needed. My Makerspace was made up of an 8 cube storage container with the cubic bins that slide inside. On each bin labelled the materials inside with words and pictures to help my students clean up easily.

You can see pictures of my Makerspace here.