I love this site. I am an early childhood education student, about to begin my senior year/student teaching. Every year on campus we try to host a fall STEM Day and a spring STEM Day for an area elementary school. a couple of years ago we designed one of the STEM nights around the theme "Girls Just Wanna Have STEM". This would be a great girls night STEM idea to try this year. Thanks for the post!

You can use a science lesson to create your seating arrangements. Pass out a picture of an animal to each student. Make sure no animals are duplicated. Let students share their animal with the rest of the class. Discuss what all of the animals have in common and what makes them different. Have the students group themselves based on their animals' similarities (i.e. classify the animals). Then group their desks to match the groups they've created. This doesn't have to be a permanent seating arrangement, but it's a fun lesson that allows the students to be (or appear to be ;)) in control.

Hi Anna --

The February issue of NSTA's Science Scope has the theme of project-based learning. Although this is a middle school journal, I suspect that the activities could be ramped up a bit for high school. There are good articles on co-designing projects with students and managing group work.

Mary B.