3 Fun Ways to Create Community in Science Class

Once the first days of school have passed, I often feel like there is no more time to waste. We continue to greet students at the door and learn names, faces, and pronouns, but it can be tempting to leave classroom culture to develop organically and to emphasize content over connection. It’s easy to assume that students remember the classroom values we discussed the first day: that it is OK to make mistakes, that learning is a process, and that collaboration is encouraged.

Teaching high school science, as I do, it is also tempting to think that teenagers are “too cool” for team-builders or are already comfortable with the culture of schooling. Although they might not say it, high school students still need to feel a sense of belonging and to know that you care and the classroom is a safe space. Fortunately, content and community are not mutually exclusive, and STEM challenges can provide a method for simultaneously setting expectations, assessing student prior knowledge, and building a culture of collaboration.

Working Collaboratively to Follow a Procedure

During one of the first classes, I use a “ransom note” to informally assess students’ abilities to collaboratively follow detailed procedures. I create a mystery scenario in which three teachers at the school are suspected of stealing an item from the class (a golden armadillo statue in my case). The thief has left a ransom note. I share that each teacher suspect is known to use a different pen. I explain that we can use chromatography, a scientific process for separating pigments, to determine which pen was used to write the ransom note.

I distribute detailed, step-by-step instructions and assign each student a specific role in the process, from measuring and setting up the materials to analyzing the separated ink. The students must communicate, problem-solve, and share findings with one another, ensuring that everyone contributes to figuring out who wrote the note and, thus, who most likely stole the object.

The activity is designed to challenge students to work together, combine their observations, and follow the instructions as a team. In the process, they learn the value of communication, cooperation, and responsibility while also allowing the teacher to identify who in the class is comfortable in leadership roles and who might need encouragement to step out of their comfort zone. The sense of achievement when they identify the suspect helps set the tone for the rest of the year, fostering a classroom culture based on collaboration while also reinforcing the expectation of self-directed learning and procedural accuracy.

Embracing mistakes

No one likes to be wrong, and the fear of failure can keep students passively waiting to write down the correct answer rather than thinking through challenges themselves. I use the marshmallow challenge to help students experience firsthand that my classroom is a safe space in which mistakes are embraced as learning opportunities. Students work in small groups with a limited set of materials to achieve a goal: to use 20 pieces of spaghetti to create the tallest freestanding tower that can support a marshmallow on the top.

The marshmallow challenge allows students to problem-solve to achieve a common goal while also providing a low-stakes opportunity to embrace mistakes as part of the learning process. When students encounter setbacks such as a tower collapse, they’re encouraged to see these moments not as failures, but as valuable opportunities to try again to make things even better the next time.

This activity provides a real-time demonstration that I believe in having the opportunity to try again and helps illustrate the rationale behind my classroom policy for retakes and revision. Learning, like building a tower, is not an instant or failure-free process. When a toddler builds with blocks, people cheer when the tower falls and the young child tries again. Similarly, when my students are learning and their “tower” falls on a test, I want them to feel empowered to try again and learn from their mistakes. Our classroom culture embraces that growth mindset.

Valuing progress

Puzzle races also help to build a growth mindset by demonstrating clear evidence of the students’ ability to improve over time. For this activity, I place students in small groups and assign roles to facilitate collaborative learning and full participation. Each group receives a timer, a piece of graph paper, and a small 20-to-30-piece puzzle.

Students are tasked to collaboratively complete the puzzle three times and to measure the time needed for each successful attempt. I then have the students graph their data, providing me with the opportunity to assess their incoming mathematical skills. This juxtaposition of small-scale learning and data graphing allows students to visually see how their time decreases as they improve, offering a tangible representation of their growth.

As students complete multiple practice sessions, they learn that improvement comes from effort and persistence, not just innate ability, thus reinforcing the concept of growth mindset. The repeated cycles of attempting the puzzle, tracking progress, and seeing their graph change again reinforce the idea that mistakes are part of the learning process, not tragedies to be avoided.

Ransom-note chromatography, the marshmallow challenge, and puzzle races are just three examples of STEM challenges that can be used to not only spark curiosity and critical thinking but also lay a strong foundation for classroom community. These hands-on experiences encourage students to communicate, problem-solve, and support one another, while helping me, as the teacher, to get a sense of classroom dynamics and background skills. Engaged and active students participating in purposeful activities are students who will be prepared to face challenges throughout the year in a collaborative classroom culture. Are your students up for the challenge?