Special Ed STEM Teacher Uses Strawbees to Spark Creativity

Many people might assume that STEM is only for advanced learners or people who are keen on mathematics and sciences. Andrea’s experience as a special education teacher is quite the opposite.

“I love using STEM in my classroom with my students because all of many of my students are very reluctant learners. Traditional academics often do not work for them but with STEM and hands-on learning, they are far more engaged and are able to demonstrate their learning much better!”

Andrea has spent three years as a STEM teacher within a special education program and previously taught for 7 years in a high school classroom in the same program. She brought Strawbees into her class in 2019. In her experience, hands- on and project based learning engages students in special education contexts and is a great way to boost their academics.

Andrea's school provides many special education programs including center-based special education programs. A center-based special education program is a specialized educational setting that provides tailored instruction and support to students with disabilities, often those with more significant needs than can be met in a general education classroom.

Andrea works across six different programs including autistic support, emotional support, and school to work programs covering ages from kindergarten all the way up to 21 years old.

“I began working with Strawbees and specifically my course was a Strawbees Lab extension with micro:bit. I’ve used pre-made lessons in Strawbee’s classroom and built lessons around them.”

Andrea has focused lessons around a variety of subject matters including animals and the famous Strawbees crane and earthquakes. While Strawbees works well within maths and science, Andrea has implemented Strawbees in a full cultural studies unit where her students learned about every country in Africa, Asia and Europe.

“With each country, we did either an art activity, a cooking activity or a STEM challenge. To end our Africa continent module, students chose a country each and did a study on it and then used Strawbees to build a solution for a challenge related to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals that the country was facing..”

With the help of School Partnerships Manager Rasmus Carlsson, Andrea was able to integrate lessons on solar power from Strawbees Classroom and many students chose to integrate solar power into their country’s solution.

“One of my students wanted to have a solar panel that would follow and track the sunlight so that it could continue to gather as much sunlight as possible so that it could power a hospital. I had a student make a toilet out of Strawbees that could collect the rainwater and it was like a self-flushing toilet. He loved it.”

Another student who uses a communication device to communicate built sneakers out of Strawbees and used it to explain that because he felt the people in his country were not healthy, creating sneakers could help them exercise.

Even students who have trouble with fine motor skills can still access Strawbees with the help of a personal care assistant or a partner, especially since the different colors of straws allow for them to identify and work with the straws based on their color.

With her students that struggle to write independently or are extremely reluctant to write, Andrea has found that when they can be creative and show what they know, it opens up doors for them that aren’t accessed through traditional academics.

“They just really like being able to be creative. A lot of them love creating and then filming their creation and showing me how it works. They are able to explain the mechanics behind it or what their idea was. They’ll give me a lot more detail when they're explaining their creation than if I were to ask them to write a sentence.”

Seeing around 26 classes a week, Andrea utilizes a lot of recycled materials and sometimes feels a little bit sad at not being able to keep all of the student’s creations. With Strawbees, it’s something that is less bulky and therefore easier to keep around and use them to continue to iterate.

“With the Strawbees, I have a limited number of kits but it’s very easy to keep their creations over time and allow them to continue to build on over a week or two weeks.”

Andrea has even been able to implement some of the lessons with her 12 graders, improving upon things like the earthquake shake table, even when the original lesson seemed a little intimidating and helped them improve their teamworking skills.

“They problem-solved through some really big challenges and worked together. I think they made some improvements which made it shake more effectively. I was really proud of them getting through some of the frustration of ‘I can’t tell what this is wanting me to do’. That was really awesome to see them use some of that teamwork.”

Going forward, Andrea wants to utilize more coding and micro:bits so that she can implement coding in later lessons after introducing students to the basics of Strawbees. She has created blog posts and internal professional development trainings to teach others in the IU about Strawbees and is always happy top lend her kits to other classrooms when they’re interested in integrating it into their lessons.

“I introduced Strawbees immediately after getting training in it and they really enjoyed it. They like the colors and it’s also something that allowed all of my students to participate. I’ll definitely continue working with Strawbees in the future.”

“I introduced Strawbees immediately after getting training in it and they really enjoyed it. They like the colors and it’s also something that allowed all of my students to participate. I’ll definitely continue working with Strawbees in the future.”

Andrea Fellows

Special Education STEM Teacher, Lancaster Special Education, Pennsylvania

Making STEM Accessible for Every Learner

Background

Implementation

Outcomes

How Andrea Implements STEM

Andrea Fellows