Supply organization and distribution can play an outsized role in the preparation routines of many STEM educators. Between tracking down the perfect material for a particular task to remembering where you cleverly stashed an item, managing all of the things can be stressful and time-consuming. While getting everything organized in the first place takes lots of time and effort, I want to share a practice that you can start implementing tomorrow that might relieve some of the stuff struggle – the Materials Buffet! Keep reading to learn about three reasons Materials Buffets are perfect for STEM challenges and to download a free Materials Buffet guidelines poster.
What is a Materials Buffet?
A Materials Buffet is a curated offering of supplies that students access independently. They are easy to set up and implement – just use the following three steps.
- For a given challenge, identify a set of materials that are “on offer” and set them up in bins or baskets.
- Define how many of a particular item students can use – sticky notes on or in front of the bins work well for this.
- Explain the Materials Buffet procedure to students. Students choose what materials they’d like to use and also choose the quantity for each material (up to the limit). Just like at a food buffet, students don’t have to take some of everything, just what appeals to them. (See the bottom of this post for a free download of the Materials Buffet sign you see in the photo below.)
Why Use a Materials Buffet?
Reason #1: Save Time Prepping and Managing Supplies
Using a Materials Buffet will save you time on both the front and back-ends of STEM challenges. Prepping your materials is as easy as locating what will be on offer, finding containers to corral those materials, and putting out your limit labels. Once the challenge is over, students can help you sort any unused materials back into their bins.
It wasn’t until COVID upended almost everything that I do in my classroom that I realized how much time the practice of using a Materials Buffet was saving me. Creating individual kits with supplies for each challenge is tedious and frequently leads to me having piles of extra kits and kits with random remnants hanging around my STEM Lab that I need to take care of once the challenge is over. Being able to return to Materials Buffets this year has been a huge time-saver for me.
Reason #2: Inject Student Thinking Into Supply Selection
Whenever I give my students a supply kit, it doesn’t seem to matter how I frame it – many of my students will end up fixated on needing to use all of the materials in the bag. Because I organized all of the materials for them, a majority of students seem to think that they all must be equally useful and necessary for a successful solution.
In contrast, when I offer a Materials Buffet, the supply selection process becomes one of the key parts of the “Think” phase of our STEM challenge. Now assessing the materials for their utility and determining how to combine them becomes much more student-driven. When the pressure is off of me to curate and stuff all of those individual bags, I find myself offering more materials than I otherwise might, which ends up leading to more innovative student creations. In fact, a Materials Buffet often becomes the perfect opportunity to serve up those random materials that I know a kid could use to make something interesting – you know, the “junk” that you just can’t bring yourself to toss because it’s “useful,” yet you never actually use it.
Some students will initially still take up to the limit of each and every material on offer, but you can circumvent this and up the ante on critical thinking with a couple of easy moves. One, you can impose a limit on the number of different items students can select. For example, you might offer 8 different materials but allow them to choose only 5. They can still take their chosen items up to the specified quantity, but they can’t take some of each one. Two, you can offer item trading. If students made their selection of 5 items and then realize that one of the unchosen materials would actually be the perfect thing, you can give them a chance to trade out materials. I allow my students to trade out their materials if they haven’t altered them. So, if they simply tested a popsicle stick, they could trade it in, but if they cut it in half, they’re stuck with that particular item.
Reason #3: Reduce Supply Waste
I’m that teacher that will sit and look through heaps of used materials to find the bits that can be reused. Supply waste makes me cringe, particularly when STEM can sometimes rely on staple materials that aren’t particularly great for the planet (I’m slowly transitioning to paper straws over here…) When you make kits, you often commit yourself to doling out a set number of items and these items don’t always get used or, if they do, not in ways that are furthering student learning (Hello, rubber band guns for the hundredth time!). Three pipe cleaners per bag can add up quickly when you’re teaching a lesson to multiple classes and grade levels. The “take what you need” approach of a Materials Buffet balances our goal of getting useful materials into kids’ hands with responsible and sustainable management of resources. At the end of a STEM lesson, you can even invite your students to become your partners in recycling and reusing by asking them to sort their still usable items back into the proper bins.
In summary, Materials Buffets can make your teacher life slightly easier, push students’ critical thinking, and help save the planet. If you haven’t tried this practice before, I hope you consider giving it a go — I’d love to hear how it goes!