If you’re a STEM teacher, you likely know firsthand that transitions between classrooms often invite chaos! And rightly so, as students are typically coming out of difficult (and – I’ll let my bias show – possibly boring) “traditional” academic work or have just had lunch or recess. After years of ironing out a strong starting class routine and still winding up trying to deliver instructions upstream against the wiggles and side conversations in grades K-2, I’ve finally landed on a solution that works – starting playful!
Read on for three quick-and-tested strategies for opening your K-2 STEM lessons with play and purpose.
This is my all-time favorite transition activity for K-2 – it’s incredibly simple, but highly effective. STEM, STEM, STEM is a mini-scavenger hunt. Before my students enter the room, I hide a cup that features a picture of my STEM class mascot “Q.”
I then meet students in the hallway and give them the instructions for the game:
I’ve hidden a Q cup in the STEM lab. When you enter the room, walk around the space looking for Q. When you spot the cup, say “STEM, STEM, STEM” quietly to yourself and then find your seat. Don’t tell anyone else where the cup is so everyone can enjoy trying to find it!
An excited energy emerges as students enter the classroom and, after the first few times playing, students do stop pointing the cup out to their classmates. This transition works well because students get their wiggles out, get a moment to chat, and often experience delight as they find Q’s clever new hiding spot.
This transition works particularly well if a building activity is on the agenda for class. As students enter the room, I hand them one of a building material that we’ll be using in our activities (a Keva Plank, a Lego, a plastic cup, etc.). We then sit together in a circle on the floor with our items. I place my own building material in the center of the circle to start the building. I’ll then pull a popsicle stick with a student name on it and that person will add their piece to the creation. And then so on until everyone has built. We then turn and talk to a neighbor about what we think we made.
I love this transition because it fosters cooperation, creative thinking as we consider what we’ve built, and it gives students practice interacting with one of the materials that we’ll be using during the day’s lesson.
In the “What is This?” activity, students enter the room to find an image projected on the board. The image is a zoomed-in picture of something and students need to formulate a guess about what it could be. (I steal most of my pictures from here.)
Here’s a recent example I used in a kindergarten class:
After a minute or so to come up with their guess, I quickly go around the room and invite each student to share their thinking. (Honestly, you should try this just to hear some of the wild ideas kindergarteners will generate!) Then, I advance to the next slide for the big reveal!
I love this transition because it piques curiosity and gives students a chance to practice using evidence to formulate a logical guess. The quality and depth of student thinking increases dramatically in subsequent rounds of “What Is This?”
So there you have it – three ideas for taming those tricky transitions! When I start class with one of these strategies, I find students are much more prepared to focus during those key five minutes when I go over the task and directions for the day. Adding these strategies to my repertoire has been a game-changer for the flow of my K-2 classes.
Do you have a transition activity you love using with young learners? Please share below – I’m always looking to add more tricks to my toolkit!