1. Design a tiny house for ANY character or author. This is the project that got my students and me hooked on STEM. After reading some informational texts on the environmental benefits of tiny houses (science), watching researching tiny house clips (technology), and evaluating character traits, my students designed a tiny house to fit the needs of a character in the novel we were reading. They used Floorplanner.com to design their houses (engineering) while calculating square footage so as not go over the 500 sq ft mark (math). I can not tell you how much my students loved this project. They really got into the design symbolism for the character and especially enjoyed seeing their designs come to life in 3D.
This blog entry has great suggestions for ways to have students do STEM in language arts. I plan to use some of these activities as options for my 6th graders independent reading projects. My favorite STEM idea provided was designing a tiny house for any character or author.