Code.org is a nonprofit dedicated to expanding access to computer science in schools and increasing participation by young women and students from other underrepresented groups. The vision is that every student in every school has the opportunity to learn computer science as part of their core K-12 education.

Learn professional programming languages using the Pencil Code editor that lets you work in either blocks or text. Create art, music, games, and stories. Or invent a program that will change the world.

The Micro:bit Educational Foundation is a non-profit organization that seeks to support exceptional educational programs across the globe. There are several computer science and practical programming projects available.

Codesters combines a fun online coding platform for students, a powerful learning management system for teachers, and built-out coding lessons so you can start teaching kids to code in your school today.

CodeHS is a comprehensive teaching platform for helping schools teach computer science. There is web-based curriculum, teacher tools and resources, and professional development opportunities for computer science.

Blockly Games is a series of educational games that teach programming. It is designed for children who have not had prior experience with computer programming. By the end of these games, players can be better prepared to use conventional text-based languages.

From mechanics to astronomy, JavaLab has several block coding interactives for students to learn basic programming concepts.

CMU CS Academy is an online, graphics-based computer science curriculum taught in Python provided by Carnegie Mellon University. Novel, world-class Computer Science education for your classroom awaits —and it’s entirely free.

Google’s CS First program provides teachers with the tools and resources to teach computer science at no cost — so every student has access to the skills that will shape the future. Students code with Scratch, a free, block-based programming tool developed by MIT. It’s ideal for beginners to learn coding. Students “snap” together blocks of commands that the computer can carry out.

With Scratch, students can program interactive stories, games, and animations — and share creations with others in the online community. Scratch is designed, developed, and moderated by the Scratch Foundation, a nonprofit organization. It is provided free of charge.

MIT App Inventor is an intuitive, visual programming environment that allows everyone – even children – to build fully functional apps for smartphones and tablets. Those new to MIT App Inventor can have a simple first app up and running in less than 30 minutes. And what’s more, the blocks-based tool facilitates the creation of complex, high-impact apps in significantly less time than traditional programming environments.

Engage in creative coding opportunities on OpenProcessing, a community of creative coders, educators, and designers who explore, experiment, and play.

CodeCombat is a community coding project, with hundreds of players volunteering to create levels, contribute to code to add features, fix bugs, playtest, and even translate the game into 50 languages so far.

Replit is a free, collaborative, in-browser IDE to code in 50+ languages, with opportunities in education, learning resources, and team planning.

Pygame is a set of Python modules designed for writing video games. Pygame adds functionality on top of the excellent SDL library. This allows users to create fully featured games and multimedia programs in the python language.

Code Club is a global community of volunteers, educators, and partners to run free coding clubs where 9-to-13-year-olds build and share their ideas. With concepts in learning through creating, coding projects offer young people plenty of opportunities to be creative and to share their creations with each other.

CodeMonkey is a fun and educational game-based environment where kids learn to code without any prior experience. After completing CodeMonkey’s award-winning coding courses, kids will be able to navigate through the programming world with a sense of confidence and accomplishment.

Codelicious provides full-year computer science curriculum for K-12. Codelicious courses are delivered with everything teachers need to teach computer science, including lesson plans, assessments, and standards mapping. By bringing Codelicious into the classroom, teachers provide their students with opportunities to learn skills in collaboration, critical thinking, and problem solving.

p5.js is a JavaScript library for creative coding, with a focus on making coding accessible and inclusive for artists, designers, educators, beginners, and others! p5.js is free and open-source.

BlocksCAD is an education technology company dedicated to creating tools that help students of all ages pursue their love of science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM). Our signature product, BlocksCAD, is a cloud-based 3D modeling tool that encourages users to learn math, computational thinking and coding concepts through visualization and designing models to be 3D printed.

Active learning begins with curiosity! The Curious George STEM Collection is a great way to help young children understand science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) concepts, such as measuring, building, and simple machines. Lesson plans with Curious George videos offer hands-on investigations and exciting new learning opportunities that will inspire children to explore the world around them.

https://unctv.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/curiousgeorge/#.WdzHBmhSyUk

Real estate is a complex field that requires skills in math, science, English, social studies and home economics. By incorporating real estate-based lessons into your curriculum, you can help students gain valuable skills in practical math application, presentation giving, forming a persuasive argument, earth science and so much more!

https://www.redfin.com/blog/2015/08/the-educators-guide-to-real-estate-lesson-plans.html

Many people who enter cryptocurrency come at it as developers, supported by knowledge in computer science and mathematics. Others come at it from finance or economics angles, both of which benefit from a strong foundation in quantitative studies. Still others have even more diverse backgrounds but have had enough exposure to STEM concepts that they can easily grasp crypto projects.

Read more…

Grade Levels: 3-5, 6-8, 9-12

In this computer programming basics lesson plan, which is adaptable for grades 3-12, students use BrainPOP resources (including online coding games) to learn about programming.

https://educators.brainpop.com/lesson-plan/computer-programming-basics-lesson-plan-tynker-games/

Challenge young students with STEM applications based in traditional children’s literature.

http://www.uastem.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/2013-UA-STEM-PROBLEM-SOLVING-ACTIVITIES.pdf

It’s never too early to encourage kids and teens to pursue education and activities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). It’s important to set future generations up for success as careers in these fields continue to grow.

This guide features summer camps, websites, competitions, apps, and career resources for students in elementary school to high school.

https://www.mastersindatascience.org/resources/the-ultimate-stem-guide-for-kids-239-cool-sites-about-science-technology-engineering-and-math/

Amazon Future Engineer is a comprehensive childhood-to-career program to inspire, educate, and train children and young adults from underserved and low-income communities to pursue careers in computer science. More information can be found here.

We know how tough it can be to engage student interest in math so we’ve compiled a list of resources for lesson plans for grades K-12 so parents and educators can skip all the tedious research and get right to the fun parts of teaching and learning! In this article, we provide lesson plans for both classroom-based and project-based learning, broken down by age group.

https://www.homeadvisor.com/r/mathematics-application-in-everyday-life/

A helpful guide to recycling recommended  by a Girl Scout troop!

http://www.bottlestore.com/kids-guide-to-recycling-glass-and-plastic

From the Early Childhood STEM Working Group, a policy report on Providing High-Quality STEM Experiences for All Young Learners, available at http://ecstem.uchicago.edu/.

Created by the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, available at https://tech.ed.gov/earlylearning/.

In a unanimous vote, the Arkansas State Board of Education adopted new K-12 Science Standards for Grade K-4 and 5-8 on June 11, 2015. The standards, based on the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), mark the state’s attempts to bring science education into the 21st century with a considerably greater emphasis on real-world applications, inquiry-based learning and modern-day issues.

https://www.knowatom.com/blog/classroom-resources-ready-for-new-arkansas-science-standards

The Arkansas Ag in the Classroom program was created to promote awareness of the importance of agriculture to our communities, state, nation and the world to students in all grade levels. The Ag in the Classroom program features K-12 classroom materials, garden grants, educational programs and teacher workshops.

https://www.arfb.com/pages/education/teacher-resources/

This article helps parents and teachers know what to look for in a STEM lesson and offers 9 examples of quality online resources. Read the full article here.

This information was provided by Baylor’s EdD online in Learning and Organizational Change.

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. To access these teaching resources, please visit their website at https://www.nsta.org/daily-do.

Learning about building, construction, and woodworking not only fosters critical thinking skills and creativity simultaneously but can help to set you up for a very successful career in the future. But the best part is that doing building and engineering projects can be a lot of fun, too. With just a few supplies and some basic tools, you can solve problems, create practical things for around the house, and make cool gifts for your friends and family.

Learn more…

Real estate is a complex field that requires skills in math, science, English, social studies and home economics. By incorporating real estate-based lessons into your curriculum, you can help students gain valuable skills in practical math application, presentation giving, forming a persuasive argument, earth science and so much more!

https://www.redfin.com/blog/2015/08/the-educators-guide-to-real-estate-lesson-plans.html

Many people who enter cryptocurrency come at it as developers, supported by knowledge in computer science and mathematics. Others come at it from finance or economics angles, both of which benefit from a strong foundation in quantitative studies. Still others have even more diverse backgrounds but have had enough exposure to STEM concepts that they can easily grasp crypto projects.

Read more…

Grade Levels: 3-5, 6-8, 9-12

In this computer programming basics lesson plan, which is adaptable for grades 3-12, students use BrainPOP resources (including online coding games) to learn about programming.

https://educators.brainpop.com/lesson-plan/computer-programming-basics-lesson-plan-tynker-games/

Did you know that PBS Learning Media puts hundreds of FREE lesson plans at your fingertips? Just search by grade, subject, or keyword to uncover creative activities, discussion questions, and new approaches to learning!

The home page is customized for Arkansas teachers.  These resources can be very helpful as you incorporate CCSS for ELA at K-5 or CCSS for Literacy in Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects at grades 6-12 into your science lessons.  There is also a section on Engineering Design http://aetn.pbslearningmedia.org/collection/ngss-eng/

http://aetn.pbslearningmedia.org/

It’s never too early to encourage kids and teens to pursue education and activities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). It’s important to set future generations up for success as careers in these fields continue to grow.

This guide features summer camps, websites, competitions, apps, and career resources for students in elementary school to high school.

https://www.mastersindatascience.org/resources/the-ultimate-stem-guide-for-kids-239-cool-sites-about-science-technology-engineering-and-math/

Amazon Future Engineer is a comprehensive childhood-to-career program to inspire, educate, and train children and young adults from underserved and low-income communities to pursue careers in computer science. More information can be found here.

We know how tough it can be to engage student interest in math so we’ve compiled a list of resources for lesson plans for grades K-12 so parents and educators can skip all the tedious research and get right to the fun parts of teaching and learning! In this article, we provide lesson plans for both classroom-based and project-based learning, broken down by age group.

https://www.homeadvisor.com/r/mathematics-application-in-everyday-life/

To expand upon concepts in physics, calculus, geometry, engineering, and algebra, teachers can use architecture activities for greater student understanding. Architecture is no longer an area of study that simply covers building homes and commercial structures. The concentration also includes things like environmental design, landscape architecture, and urban planning. Here are some activities that can bridge the divide between traditional science and engineering concepts in your classroom.

http://edu.stemjobs.com/architecture-activities-to-help-you-address-ngss-engineering-standards/

Students with disabilities face access challenges to typical science labs in precollege and postsecondary settings. Access barriers may prevent a student from:

• gaining knowledge,
• demonstrating knowledge, and
• fully participating in lab activities.

There are two approaches to making academic activities accessible to students with disabilities—accommodations and universal design (UD). Accommodations are alternate formats, assistive technology, and other adjustments for specific students once they are enrolled in a class. For examples of accommodations in science classes, consult the publications Working Together: Science Teachers and Students with Disabilities and The Winning Equation: Access + Attitude = Success in Math and Science.

http://www.washington.edu/doit/making-science-labs-accessible-students-disabilities

This website has short teacher videos with good ideas on chemistry and biology: www.flinnsci.com.  Click on Teacher Resource Videos and scroll to Minute Videos.  These videos give you ideas about teaching concepts, safety ideas, etc.

For biology teachers: www.hhmi.org/biointeractive also has great video clips.  They have one ontranslation that is great and gives students a real-time picture of what is happening.

http://www.flinnsci.com/

In a unanimous vote, the Arkansas State Board of Education adopted new K-12 Science Standards for Grade K-4 and 5-8 on June 11, 2015. The standards, based on the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), mark the state’s attempts to bring science education into the 21st century with a considerably greater emphasis on real-world applications, inquiry-based learning and modern-day issues.

https://www.knowatom.com/blog/classroom-resources-ready-for-new-arkansas-science-standards

The Arkansas Ag in the Classroom program was created to promote awareness of the importance of agriculture to our communities, state, nation and the world to students in all grade levels. The Ag in the Classroom program features K-12 classroom materials, garden grants, educational programs and teacher workshops.

https://www.arfb.com/pages/education/teacher-resources/

More information can be found here.

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. To access these teaching resources, please visit their website at https://www.nsta.org/daily-do.