Building Confidence and Creativity Through STEAM

Once Mary was able to have some training in how to use Strawbees and follow the basic guides, she felt confident being able to use them with students, showing them how to work with the materials and avoid destroying them by accident.

“A lot of the time, the best thing I did was just let them explore first and then we talked about how to build. That’s what excites me about next year, is getting the micro:bits in and getting the builds moving. The kids show me new ways to use things with Strawbees that even I don’t see.”

Mary says that the key to working well with Strawbees in the classroom was to start small. She began with older kids in fourth and fifth grade before scaling them down to younger students. After having “dabbled” as Mary says with different STEM tools including four different types of robots, Mary now combines Strawbees with other tools that she has found over the years.

“I try to focus on becoming the master of the tools or of a project as we work through it. What’s cool about Strawbees is that with my younger kids, they can go through the lessons and use colors to figure out the steps of the lesson.”

As part of implementing Strawbees, Mary has also done the work needed to incorporate curriculum standards into what she can offer. She looks at the topics and themes of areas such as mathematics and science and particularly Strawbees helps out with not only building but measurements.

“I try to pull in that engineering and design strategy. I have my own STEM standards but we incorporate measuring of the different straws and metrics into design and building.”