talkSTEM builds the capacity of teachers, out of school educators, and parents to effectively engage and encourage students to interact with math and science concepts in their immediate environment.
To foster stronger STEM literacy and cultivate a STEM mindset, talkSTEM meets students and educators where they are by providing readily accessible ways for both groups to access high-quality enrichment activities, events, and curriculum.
Looking for classroom-based or afterschool activities and projects that are fun, educational, and standards-aligned?
Click on any of the talkSTEM resources below to learn more.
Find STEM as it exists in our everyday world, explored through walks through neighborhoods, parks, zoos, and more
Get content on the go, completely for FREE, with maps, GPS directions, photo galleries, and contests, supported by the Otocast app
We provide materials and guidance to communities looking to STEAM power their outreach, and support those who making walks and videos of their own with platform, resources, and press
Books and guides for PreK and up, and other news and research we're involved in
We partner with sites to create programs, handouts, and more catered to their location - from libraries to schools to nature centers and beyond
Explore our place-based educational video collections with 250+ videos - all standards-aligned!
Our math-focused app and library suite, developed in partnership with SMU and supported by NSF funding
Teacher Professional Development
Training courses for teachers looking to use talkSTEM techniques in the classroom, and easy-to-use standards published for our content, for both Pre-K - 3rd Grade and 4th Grade and Up.
* Our walkSTEM Academy and STEM in the Real World videos can be used as brief enrichments or longer explorations either virtually or in-person.
** Our video resources include tagged and standards aligned educational videos at gomathfinder.org, as well as expert video blogs, panel discussions, workshops, and more at our YouTube channel. walkSTEM content is available elsewhere as well! To view walkSTEM tours in a mobile app format, with maps, audio, video, images, directions to tour stops, and more, search for talkSTEM on the Otocast app - available here! You can also click here to view our guide for how best to engage with our content in the app.walkSTEM materials are also part of Belouga, an online education platform. There you'll find paired teaching materials, quizzes, and instructional videos and activities. For more information or to get started, click here.
Not sure where to get started?
The graphics below break down examples of how you can use different parts of the Learning Suite depending on how much time you have and your interests.
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Additional Learning Suite Resources
Virtual Math & Science Festival
Virtual Math and Science Festival
Free YouTube resource created as a community collaborative project in response to at-home learning. 17+ activity videos engage all children and invite them to make connections between science, technology, engineering, art, math, and their world. Free downloadable festival passport also available here to amplify the activity.
Create Your Own walkSTEM® Program
Create Your Own walkSTEM® Program
Use photography, video, animation, etc to cultivate your STEM mindset. We invite everyone to submit their creations to join the growing community of walkSTEM participants.
Detailed Educator guides for our Create Your Own walkSTEM program are now available for both elementary ages and middle/high school ages. These guides contain planning sheets, student worksheets, rubrics, and online teaching tips.
#STEMLens
#STEMLens is a bite-sized version of the Create Your Own walkSTEM Program. This activity will challenge you to focus on observation and real-world based learning. Look around you – do you recognize any STEM concepts in play? What questions do you ask? What are you curious about? Share these observations with us to grow the collection of real world STEM experiences.
talkSTEM Supplementary Activity Guides
talkSTEM Supplementary Activity Guides
Use this extensive collection of student and teacher guides to extend your learning during virtual field trips or during brief enrichment lessons where you use talkSTEM videos. These can be flexibly used during in-class or online learning sessions, during synchronous or asynchronous learning, for individual or small groupwork. Great for teachers and out of school educators who work with students in K-12 grade levels.
Growing Lab Girls
This is a curricular toolkit inspired by the memoir, Lab Girl by Dr. Hope Jahren. Created in partnership with UT Southwestern Medical Center, SMU, Dallas Arboretum, and Design Connect Create. The free standards-aligned PDF includes STEM career insights, engineering design challenges, real experiments and data from Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Gardens, social media challenges, and photography and writing contests. Read about past winners here. Appropriate for grades 7 – 12.
Goodnight Dallas — walkSTEM® Edition
Goodnight Dallas — walkSTEM® Edition
A beautiful picture book for our youngest groups and their adults. Included are unique and easy to use tools to cultivate STEM exploration instincts and mindsets! Both children and their adults will have a lot of fun exploring the book and the every day environments using the tools and guidance in this book.
talkSTEM Video-Based Learning Activities
We have amazing STEM education videos on the talkSTEM YouTube Channel. You can browse over 250 videos here. We continue to create engaging worksheets that are based on the videos. Below you will see choice boards and scavenger hunts.
FREE Choice Boards
These free worksheets allow all parents and educators to easily use the learning suite without the planning! The choice boards are hyperlinked, so we highly suggest that your students access the PDF online. QR codes link to the same resources as the hyperlinks.
There are multiple versions for each grade level. See purple download links below. This is an example of 1 version of the Grades 3-5 Choice Boards. Below you will find links to multiple versions that each contain a unique batch of activities.
Grades 3-5 Choice Board VERSION A
Grades 6-8 Choice Board VERSION B
Scavenger Hunt
Go on a scavenger hunt and see what science, technology, engineering, art and math you can find around you! We are creating new versions that will be uploaded here for your use.
The Nature Scavenger Hunt
Every child is a STEM child, Every space is a STEM space
talkSTEM works hard to make unique and high quality STE(A)M educational content freely available to all children. We partner with such youth-serving organizations as Dallas ISD, Girls Inc, Imagine Science, and more. Every dollar you contribute goes directly to our educational programming and content creation that reaches under-resourced student populations. Please support us.
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