STEM in the French Immersion Classroom
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard the term “STEM” floating around in education for the past several years. You may have also heard of the great benefits that STEM-based activities have on children and why it has increased in popularity in the classroom. If not, no worries, I’m here to walk you through the overall idea of STEM, why it’s so great and how to incorporate French STEM activities in your own classroom today!
What does STEM stand for?
Now before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s take a step back and look at the meaning of STEM. The acronym stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. More recently, an “A” has been added to the acronym, referring to the arts.
I know what you’re thinking, this sounds very complex and out of touch. After all, how are we supposed to teach 7-year-olds about engineering??? I had the same thoughts and to be honest, it’s why I put off learning more about STEM for so long even though in the back of my mind, I was always interested in trying it out, especially after hearing such great things about it.
You’d actually be surprised how much we are ALREADY using some of these aspects in our teaching methods. Ever heard of play-based learning or hands-on learning? Chances are, you’re already incorporating some of the key values of STEM and are now ready to dive deeper.
What are the benefits of STEM education?
The purpose of STEM education is to help bridge the gap by allowing students the chance to explore these areas at an earlier age through integration rather than isolation. What this means, is that rather than teaching each aspect separately later in life, we can integrate them all together in a hands-on approach.
Studies show that STEM education allows students to develop their curiosity, build resilience, foster creativity, encourage teamwork and enable problem-solving skills. This hands-on approach allows students to make mistakes, learn from said mistakes and make improvements. I don’t know about you but this sounds like GREAT life skills that can apply to any job field down the road.
What I personally love about STEM education, is the values and principles we are able to teach our students through the design process. Through trial and error, students learn how to be okay with their mistakes, work together and produce something even better! Being able to adapt and use critical-thinking skills is so important in today’s world.
How to incorporate Stem in the French Immersion classroom?
As we’ve heard time and time again, kids have brains like sponges. They are able to absorb information and intel so quickly and efficiently, it’s quite amazing. We can use this to our advantage! It’s really never too early or too late to start adding French STEM activities into your classroom.
To start, I suggest dedicating an area of your classroom towards STEM. Whether that be a cart, a bookshelf, a bulletin board or simply a wall space, having STEM represented in the classroom will show your students that it has value and it’s important.
You really want to spend a good chunk of time discussing the steps of the design process. Do some backwards planning with your students and see what they come up with! For example, let’s say that the challenge is that you want your students to build a stable structure. Straight up ask them: “what do we need to do in order to have a stable structure?”
Chances are they’ll say that we first need a plan. Yes, we do. On a chart paper, list all the steps that would be required to do BEFORE the building, in order to have a successful outcome.
Typically the STEM process is as follows:
Ask Questions (What is the problem?)
Imagine (What are some ways to solve this problem?)
Plan (What exactly are we going to do?)
Create (Time to execute the plan!)
Test (AKA where most of the tears are shed)
Improve (How can we make our creation even better?)
The latter is my favourite part of the design process, as that is where the most growth can be seen.
An easy way to highlight the French Stem process and discuss the steps with your students is to have the design process somewhere permanent in your classroom so that you can continuously refer back to the posters when need be!
It’s really helpful to have some posters that explain the process so that when a student feels stumped on how to problem-solve or is not sure what to do next, they can refer to the steps of the posters.
This set of French STEM posters can help you start your discussion on what the design process should look like. You can grab them HERE.
If you don’t have your own classroom this year or don’t have much wall space, no worries! Write out the STEM design process on an anchor chart paper and use that as the guideline!
What materials are needed for STEM?
Since STEM is so open-ended, you probably already have all the materials (give or take) that you would need to run a successful STEM activity right away. Some ideas include newspapers, cardboard, pipe cleaners, tape, popsicle sticks, straws, blocks, toilet paper rolls, etc.
You can use a lot of recyclable materials for STEM activities, which is awesome. Many families are more than happy to donate materials to your classroom if you just ask! I will usually save all my cardboard boxes, cereal boxes, paper towel rolls, etc. if I know that we will be doing an upcoming STEM activity.
Here are some STEM materials I’ve purchased for my classroom. 90% of what is seen here is available at your local dollar store. I would also just check what is floating around in your school cupboards and ask your colleagues if they’ve got anything to spare.
French Stem Activities
Now, remember that the first step in the STEM design process is to find out what the problem is! So with any STEM challenge, there needs to be a problem and the students need to work together to come up with the solution.
As a French Immersion teacher, I really enjoy cross-curricular activities. If I can save time by doing an activity that crosses over into various other strands, I consider that a HUGE win.
If you teach science, you already know that a strand in the Ontario curriculum is focusing on strong and stable structures. What a great time to incorporate French STEM activities! I’ve done a variety of activities with my first graders. As seen in the photo below, groups had to work together to create a strong & stable structure that can pass the “big bad wolf” test.
That’s just a silly way for me to test out their structures by blowing on them and then giving a fairly hard flick to see if it will fall. We were reading about the three little pigs during drama, so that probably had an influence haha.
Another great & easy way to incorporate more French STEM activities in the classroom is by simply allowing for a “soft-start” in the morning. Make several bins filled with easy no-mess materials (think: building blocks, brain flakes, pipe cleaners, stacking cups, etc).
When students enter the classroom in the morning, allow STEM to be one of the choices they can do. It’s a great way to get them warmed up with their friends, use critical thinking skills and their creativity right away. You can also throw in some STEM task cards into each bin if your groups require more direction and guidance with their building.
Sometimes, I’ll just make up extravagant (and pretty unrealistic) scenarios haha. For example, I may say: oh no! Santa’s toys keep falling out of the sleigh. Let’s make an invention that will help him deliver gifts more efficiently! You can really make up any scenario and find a STEM activity to go along with it.
I really enjoy reading the “How to catch” series in French by Adam Wallace. They really highlight the engineering and building process, which gets students excited to break off into groups and do some creating of their own.
If you have these books in your school library, a great post-reading activity would be to create a trap for said character. For example, create a dragon trap or a unicorn trap.
I have French STEM journals with lesson plans and success criteria checklists to go along with these popular French books if you’re interested. They’re a ton of fun and help bring in some French STEM fun into your reading blocks!
When it comes to teaching French Immersion, cross-curricular planning is key. We simply DO NOT have enough time to do it all. So try finding areas where you can fit some STEM into drama periods, literacy time (relating the activity to whatever read-aloud you did), the arts, math and science. You’d be surprised to find how easily we can incorporate these skills into our curriculum. I’m still learning all about ways to include STEM in my own planning and I’m guessing it gets easier the more we do it.
Have I sold you on adding more French STEM activities into your classroom? I sure hope so! Thanks so much for reading and I hope this post inspires you to create some open-ended tasks for your students while using the STEM design process. You’ll be so impressed just sitting back and watching how your kiddos use their problem-solving skills and creative thinking to come up with some awesome solutions!
