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Denise shares her story about her mum's garden. Her story takes place in Kingston, Jamaica, check it out!

"My mum, who lives in Jamaica, loves her garden. A few years ago she became obsessed with mosaic tiling and it is all over the yard. In doing so, it resulted in a drainage problem. When heavy rains came, the water would accumulate and back up into the carport. She came up with an idea to build a drainage system from the front area in the garden. This included digging a huge hole with a steel mesh cover to prevent leaves from going in. But it also had a PVC 🤬 leading from the garden area that would allow water to flow through into the hole. Also, any water that would be coming off the streets would also flow into the drainage hole. This was all her idea for her Garden Engineer project."

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This STEM Story was created by Leana. Her story takes place in Cape Verde and in Rhode Island and is about her grandparents and their experience with STEM. Check out the video to hear all about it!

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Conduct an interview with a family member or neighbor to discuss the various ways people interact with STEM!

There are 4 options for interviews that we have outlined. Check out our flyers below and start interviewing today!

Here are the instructions!

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Interview a Family Member or Neighbor Who Works in a STEM Field!

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Interview a Family Member or Neighbor Who Works in a STEM Field!

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Interview a Family Member or Neighbor to Discuss STEM in their Community!

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Interview a Family Member or Neighbor to Discuss STEM in their Community!

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Interview a Family Member or Neighbor to Discuss STEM in their Childhood!

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Interview a Family Member or Neighbor to Discuss STEM in their Childhood!

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Interview a Family Member or Neighbor to Discuss STEM in the World!

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Interview a Family Member or Neighbor to Discuss STEM in the World!

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Here is the electronic version of the STEM Sleuth bookmark so you can always be thinking about and creating STEM Stories!

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We want to encourage everyone to always be on the look out for STEM in your homes, communities, neighborhoods, everywhere! Here is a great resource to help you learn how!

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This is a STEM Story from Erica:
I love finding tessellations, or tiling patterns, in the real world. I found these hexagons while walking through a neighborhood park. I talked to my nephew about it and we thought up lots of STEM questions we could ask about this pattern. My nephew said it reminded him of honeybees, because the pattern looked like a honeycomb. I wondered why honeybees make their hives using this pattern. We also had a lot of math questions: if we continued drawing the pattern, what color would the next hexagon be?

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Tessellations are great teaching and learning tools - you can explore patterns, shapes, number (especially fractions), geometric principles, and they are often found in the real world. Check out this tiling pattern from a bathroom floor, and consider what kinds of mathematical questions you could ask! You can ask your students to find tessellations in their everyday environment, and explore them together!

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Try one of these great books from the mathical website: http://www.mathicalbooks.org/. In addition to great books that spur mathematical thinking, they also inspire fun activities! You can find fun "Which One Doesn't Belong" reasoning activities on Twitter, for example, by searching for #WODB. We'll share more books related to STEM in upcoming posts.

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A STEM Story is a narrative about an experience that a person has had in their home, neighborhood, school, or anywhere. The story documents the connections to science, technology, engineering, and/or mathematics through a visual, written or audio format.

A STEM Story can be in any narrative form:

A poem, a story, a video, a drawing or illustration, a song, a play, a conversation, an exhibit

Who can share a STEM Story?

Anyone can create, interact with, and experience a STEM Story! STEM Stories help to answer the question: “Where do we see STEM in the world?”

Students can create STEM Stories about something they’ve seen, heard, or experienced.

Teachers can…

Share their own STEM Stories as a way to brainstorm with their students and facilitate rich classroom discourse around STEM

Use STEM Stories with their students as a “hook” or prompt for a lesson; a problem, task or activity; a lesson or unit; or a project.

Why create a STEM Story?

People are natural storytellers! We tell stories at home and at school, in our neighborhoods and at work. In school, we use stories in many subjects for instructional purposes, but rarely in the STEM areas.

Through STEM Stories, we can use the power of storytelling for enhanced STEM teaching and learning.

STEM Stories can be rich opportunities for…

Learning meaningful STEM content

Helping young people see connections between school work and their daily lives + experiences

Drawing on contributions from students’ communities, relationships and resources to increase interest and engagement in the STEM subjects

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"Daily Dos" from the National Science Teachers Association

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"Daily Dos" from the National Science Teachers Association

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These are great tasks for parents and teachers to engage in authentic science and engineering learning with K-12 students!

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Daily Dos are sensemaking tasks teachers and parents can use to engage their students in authentic, relevant science learning. Students actively try to figure out how the world works (science) or how to design solutions to problems (engineering) using the science and engineering practices. Engaging in these practices requires that students be part of a learning community, of classmates or family, to be able to share and evaluate ideas, give and receive critique, and reach consensus.

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Daily Dos are sensemaking tasks teachers and parents can use to engage their students in authentic, relevant science learning. Students actively try to figure out how the world works (science) or how to design solutions to problems (engineering) using the science and engineering practices.