Literacy Skills
Teaching STEM Through Literacy Teacher Resource Kit
Four complete units built around four story books, with nineteen activities, a full-color Teacher Guide, a screen-free Coding STEAM and Robotics Kit, and access to digital resources. Everything a teacher needs to run the program is in the box.
Literacy provides the shared context and language. The STEM activities extend each story into real-world investigation. Screen-free coding builds sequencing, cause-and-effect thinking, and collaboration. Reflection prompts support academic language, communication, and reasoning. No subject-matter background is assumed β the guide models the lesson before it asks anyone to teach it.
- 4 units; 19 activities and experiments
- 4 Story Books
- 1 full-color Teacher Guide
- 1 Coding STEAM & Robotics Kit (screen-free)
- Access to digital resources
- K-3
Professional learning is available to help teachers integrate literacy and STEM seamlessly.
Teaching STEM Through Literacy Teacher Resource Kit
The Big Idea
Four story books, nineteen hands-on activities and a screen-free coding robot, built to connect literacy with STEM in a K-3 room where the two are rarely taught together.
- Ages
- K-3Written for grades K through 3. Every activity says whether its materials are per student or per group, so a mixed room can scale it.
- Literacy
- Math
- Science
- Coding
- Social-Emotional Learning
Safety
- Small parts: keep away from children under 3
- Some activities use scissors
- Some activities use materials that must not be eaten
- Adult supervision recommended
What’s in the Kit
- Four Scholastic story books: Scaredy Squirrel, Giraffes Can't Dance!, Frog on a Log? and Cloudette
- The Coding Robot, included: a $150 product on its own, screen-free, with no app, device or Wi-Fi needed
- Full-color Teacher Guide: 178 pages, four units, nineteen activities, and an appendix of printable resources for every book
- The printed maps and card sets the robot runs on: apple tree map, musical tunes map, choose-your-own-adventure map, foam puzzle cards, coding cards, obstacle cards and rhyming cards
- Access to digital resources
What you add
- Scissors and tape for the activities that cut and stick
- The consumable materials each activity lists, unless you add the Student Kit
Real-world connection
Why a story first?
Literacy and STEM are rarely taught together in a K-3 room. Joining them is the whole purpose of this program, and the book is what joins them. Scaredy Squirrel will not leave his tree, so his unit asks what a tree needs to live and whether a parachute could get him down safely. Cloudette is a very small cloud, so her unit asks where rain comes from and what a shelter is for.
The story hands the room a shared problem and the words to argue about it before anybody touches a material. That is what lets the same activity land on a child who is reading fluently and on a child who is not reading yet.
Screen-free coding and music arrive the same way. In Jungle Dance the children code the robot to play notes on a piano map, and it plays back the tune they wrote. In Mission: Acorn Retrieval they build a path out of foam puzzle cards and obstacle cards and send the robot through it. No screens, no app, no logins.
Every activity is laid out the same way: the background a teacher needs in plain language with the vocabulary marked, then prompts for getting the room talking, then the materials, a safety notice, a tip from somebody who has run it, and numbered steps with a photograph of each one. The guide models the lesson before it asks anyone to teach it.
How a lesson runs
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Read the book
Each unit starts with its story, so the class shares a problem and the language for it before anything gets built.
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Meet the idea
A plain-language page gives the teacher the background, with the key words marked, and prompts for opening the discussion.
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Gather the materials
Each activity lists what it needs per student or per group, with a safety notice and a tip from somebody who has already run it.
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Work the steps
Numbered steps, each one photographed, so a teacher sees the finished thing before the class does.
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Send the robot
Several activities put the screen-free robot on a printed map, where it traces the life cycle of an apple tree, plays the notes the children coded on a piano map, or walks a path they built out of puzzle cards.
For classrooms
One Teacher Resource Kit runs the whole program: four units, nineteen activities, one guide, one robot. It is sized for the teacher rather than for a child, so a single kit covers a class.
The Student Kit is the other half of the arithmetic. Most activities call for consumable materials per student, and sourcing those four units deep is the part that quietly stops a program in March. One Student Kit carries enough of them for a class of up to 25.
Take the Teacher Resource Kit on its own if you would rather pull the consumables from your own cupboard. Add the Student Kit if you would rather not.
There is a companion professional development course built specifically around this kit. It shows a teacher how to fold the story, the STEM activity and the coding robot into the week they already teach, rather than on top of it.