Teaching STEM through Fairy Tales: Rapunzel

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, lay down your long hair to me!  In the story, Rapunzel is taken as a child and forced to live alone in a tower.   In this challenge, students will design a zip line that will help Rapunzel to escape her tower.

Materials
Kite String
Yarn
Paperclips
 Scissors
Tape
Straws
Cargo
Other Found Objects

During this challenge, students may work in teams or pairs to design a zip line to help Rapunzel.  Students may create any design they want as long as they only use the provided items.

Download the design brief for details: TeachingSTEM through Fairy Tales- Rapunzel

Merry Christmas 2014!

Join me next week to continue our series on Teaching STEM through Fairy Tales with tales such as:
The Three Little Pigs
The Billy Goats Gruff
Henny Penny
Stone Soup
The Princess and the Pea

...And more! Until then, Merry Christmas!

STEM Skills Challenge- 10 Challenges to Build STEM Skills Employers Value

In this series, we're focused on the soft skills that employers desire in top candidates.  Otherwise known as 21st century skills or the 4C's- collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and communication- these skills rank consistently at the top of the list.

Here's a recaps of the STEM Skills Challenges that will help students to further develop their soft skills.

• Gum Drop Bridge
• Paperclip Airplanes
• Newspaper Table
• Plastic Cup Pyramid
• Crazy Catapults
• Spacesuit Spuds
• Build a Better Boat
• Souper Structures
• Smooth Sailing
• Save Fred

With these skills, students will no doubt land themselves at the top of the list when going out into the workforce!

Teaching STEM through Fairy Tales: The Princess and the Pea

In the Princess and the Pea, the princess must climb up twenty mattresses and twenty featherbeds and to try to get a good night's rest.  In this challenge, students will design a parachute to return the princess safely back to the ground in the morning.

Materials
Tissue Paper
Glue Sticks
Scissors
Measuring Tape
String or Yarn
Cargo

When testing their parachutes, students should take care not to stand on tables of chairs.  In order to test from a higher height, a stairwell or balcony can be used.  If neither are available, a parachute dropper like this that clips onto the ceiling or onto a basketball hoop may be used.

Download the design brief for details: Teaching STEM through Fairy Tales: The Princess and the Pea

STEM Skills Challenge- Save Fred

With employers valuing soft skills like the 4C's (creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking), students need to develop these skills to be good competitors in the workplace.

This week's challenge stresses teamwork and collaboration as students work in teams to rescue a gummy worm named Fred and outfit him with a life preserver to keep him from falling into the water. 

STEM Skills Challenge Handout: Save Fred

Teaching STEM through Fairy Tales: Stone Soup

In the story of Stone Soup, a weary traveler wanders into the village and is told that there is no food to eat.  So, the traveler brings out his cooking pot and, with the unwitting help of the villagers, makes stone soup.  In this challenge, students will design and build a cooking pot that will hold the most soup.

Materials
Tissue Paper
Making Tape
Straws
Mini-Marshmallows

The teacher can choose for student to work in teams, pairs, or complete the challenge individually (if you have enough mini-marshmallows!). This is also a great lesson to incorporate estimation and/or volume calculations.

Download the design brief for details: Teaching STEM through Fairy Tales- Stone Soup

STEM Skills Challenge- Smooth Sailing

Throughout this series, we've been talking about the importance of soft skills and how many employers are looking for these key skills when interviewing and hiring.

Recently, a Gallup poll conducted a survey asking Americans whether soft skills should be taught in K-12 schools.  When it comes to teaching critical thinking skills, an overwhelming 80% of those surveyed believe they should be taught.  The other 4C's communication, collaboration, and creativity were highly rated as well.

This week's STEM Skills Challenge will help to build those skills as students design and build a sailboat that will "sail" at least four feet in under one minute.  The catch?  Students will only be allowed to use paperclips, index cards, aluminum foil and tape.  Once teams have designed their boats, students will test them on a table top or a tile floor by placing them in front of a fan. Hopefully, the team has collaborated on a successful design and it's smooth sailing!

STEM Skills Challenge Handout: Smooth Sailing

Teaching STEM through Fairy Tales: Henny Penny

In the tale of Henny Penny, Chicken Little is convinced that the sky is falling.  In this challenge, students work in teams to design a device that will protect Chicken Little in the event that the sky begins falling.

Materials
Bean Bags
Frosted Wheat Cereal (or similar)
Yardsticks (one per team)
Found Objects

After reading and/or reviewing the story of Henny Penny, students work in teams to design a device that will keep Henny Penny (one piece of frosted wheat cereal) safe when the sky (bean bag) starts falling.  

Students will construct their devices and test them by dropping a bean bag from different heights.  Bean bags can be grouped together for more weight if needed. 

Download the design brief for details: Teaching STEM through Fairy Tales: Henny Penny

STEM Skills Challenge- Souper Structures

USA Today College and other leading publications report that employers strongly value soft skills.  The reason?  Many employers say that they can teach the content that is required for a particular position, but can't teach those skills that take time to develop and mature like: teamwork and interpersonal skills, problem solving and analytical skills, and written and verbal communication.

In this week's STEM Skills Challenge, students are challenged to build a structure that will support a full can of soup.  It may sound like an easier challenge, but with only craft sticks, paper, paperclips and glue at their disposal, students will need to work effectively as a team and use their problem solving skills  to plan, design and build their structures.

STEM Skills Challenge Handout: Souper Structures

Teaching STEM through Fairy Tales: The Billy Goats Gruff

As students recall the fairy tale of the The Billy Goats Gruff, they will remember that the goats attempt to cross a bridge to seek out a greener pasture. In this challenge, students will design a bridge that will hold all three billy goats for more than 30 seconds.

Materials
Books
Ruler (1 per team)
Toothpicks
Gumdrops or Mini Marshmallows
Large Marshmallows (3 per team)
Tape
Stopwatches
Billy Goats

First, students will "build" their billy goats by cutting out the patterns and taping each one to a large marshmallow.   Students will then work in pairs to build their bridge using the toothpicks and gumdrops/mini-marshmallows.

Download the design brief for details: TeachingSTEM through Fairy Tales- The Billy Goats Gruff

STEM Skills Challenge- Build a Better Boat

In a recent article by CNBC on Job Skills Gap: The Basics Become a Problem a survey of 500 top executives was conducted.

Of those surveyed, 92% agree that there is a job skills gap and 44% of respondents say the gap is in "soft skills". (And not to digress, but the second most common answer at 22% was lack of technical skills.)

Specifically, the article defines soft skills as communication, critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration.  They didn't use the phrase "21st century skills", but I'm sure you recognize them as such.

So, for this week's STEM Skills Challenge, we're going to build a better boat and build our 4C's (soft skills).  In this challenge, students will use the provided supplies (plastic wrap, straws, tape, and washers) to design and build a boat that will hold 10 one inch diameter washers for at least 30 seconds without sinking. Water will be required to test the boats, but with inquisitive scientists who are focusing on the 4C's, you shouldn't get wet on this ride!

STEM Skills Challenge Handout: Build a Better Boat

Teaching STEM Through Fairy Tales: The Three Little Pigs

I'll Huff and I'll Puff and I'll Blow Your House Down! In the story of The Three Little Pigs, kids follow the story as our endearing pigs build different houses to try to escape the Big Bad Wolf.  In this challenge, students help the three pigs by building a well-designed house that will keep them safe!

Materials
Paper or Styrofoam Plates (1 per student)
Cotton Balls (3 per student)
Painter's Tape (1 roll for the class)
Measuring tape (1+ for the class)
Other Found Objects
Hair Dryer or Fan

 After reading or reviewing the story for The Three Little Pigs, students work to design and build a house for their three pigs (cotton balls) that will withstand huffs and puffs from the Big Bad Wolf (hairdryer or fan).


Download the design brief for details: Teaching STEM through Fairy Tales- The Three Little Pigs

The 4C's in STEM: Creativity, Communication, Crticial Thinking, Collaboration

This series focuses on the 4C's in STEM.  Although STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, there is much more that contributes to developing successful students than just these core content skills.

 By focusing on the skills that employers are seeking, students can build, through technology, these 21st century skills to become well-qualified job candidates when they enter the workforce.

Here's the round-up of the apps and software that I've talked about in this series:

The 4 C's in STEM: Creativity
Infographics
Glogster EDU
Animoto
PowToon
Domo Animate

The 4 C's in STEM: Communication
Padlet
MindMap Free
TitanPad
TwistedWave
TodaysMeet

The 4 C's in STEM: Critical Thinking
Visual Ranking Tool
Google
Logic Puzzles
Wordle
Kudo

The 4 C's in STEM: Collaboration
Symphonical
Google Drive
LiveBinders
Concept Board
Wikispaces

The Four C's in STEM: Collaboration with Wikispaces

Another one of my favorite tools, Wikispaces does not disappoint. Wikispaces Classroom is an ideal tool for both teachers to create a virtual space for team work.  In minutes, students can sign up for a free account and begin collaborating.  Perfect for school projects or even eportfolios, Wikispaces provides a lot of flexibility.

Using Wikispaces, students can create attractive "web pages" containing files, pictures, videos, links and other content to support their projects or eportfolios. Students can create as many supporting pages and upload as many supporting documents as needed as long as they don't go over 20MB per file limit or 2GB capacity limit.

Students can leave comments and discuss topics in a discussion thread and teachers can easily monitor since Wikispaces saves all edits and revisions.  Wikispaces Classroom pages will even allow the teacher to organize students into groups, each with their own pages and permissions...perfect for collaboration!

The Four C's in STEM: Collaboration with Conceptboard

Collaborate visually with Conceptboard by creating an account and inviting your team mates to join.  No need for anyone else to even have an account.  Simply invite others through email or just share the link.

With the basic (free) account, students can chat with their teams and upload documents, screenshots and content from the web so that all project materials can be kept in one place. And Conceptboard automatically saves any work, so that progress won't be lost.  

This virtual whiteboard even allows students to comment and reply to anything displayed in their board to help the project move forward or just brainstorm ideas.

The Four C's in STEM: Collaboration with LiveBinders

If you are researching a specific topic, LiveBinders is an ideal place to collect all of the information you find including web sites, files, pictures and videos.

Users can create a free account, then assemble a virtual binder that can then be shared with others.  Students can invite collaborators to collect and organize their materials within their binder and even create different binders for different topics or collect binders from others using the "Add to Shelf" function.

Binders set up under a free account are limited to ten binders with a storage capacity of 100 MB, but paid accounts have higher capacities. Either way, students have plenty of space to research, collect, organize and collaborate!

The Four C's in STEM: Collaboration with Google Drive

It's no secret that I am a huge fan of Google Drive.  I use it with clients all the time to share files and pictures.  If you've not experimented with it lately, I encourage you to as Drive is free and online and contains a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation platform, form creator and drawing creator.

With Drive, collaboration could not be easier.  Students can use their software of choice and upload their document to Drive, either in its native format or to be converted to a Google format. Or, start a new document in Drive.

Once the document is in Drive, students can share it to their team to edit and revise simultaneously.  By also sharing the document with their teacher, he/she can provide comments and feedback through the comment function. After receiving a comment, students can reply for clarification or resolve the comment, thus strengthening their digital collaboration skills.

The Four C's in STEM: Collaboration with Symphonical

Symphonical is an online tool that allows students to collaborate on projects and keep track of individual tasks. Organized in an easy to use grid containing categories for Not Started, In Progress and Completed, students create notes containing tasks to move around the board, thus showing visual progress. Any task that contains a due date can then be viewed on a calendar as well.

This application does require an account, but the basic service is free. Once one account holder logs in, other team members can be invited from within the app to collaborate.

An additional feature that facilitates collaboration is the ability to invite team members to a Google Hangout from within the app so that students can discuss tasks (which can be imported from Gmail and Google Drive) and priorities.

This simple and free platform can help students get organized, prioritize tasks to achieve success for the project and best of all...collaborate!

The Four C's in STEM: Critical Thinking with Microsoft Kodu

For kids who like to design and play games, Kodu from Microsoft is a high-interest way to help develop critical thinking skills.

Kodu, a free visual programming language, allows students to build, play and optionally share their own video games with other users online.  Since the software is downloaded to each computer (the only negative for our school district friends), there are no accounts or passwords to remember.  Students simply create and explore a world, then program their character or rover.  Students can edit and save changes to make their worlds better over time too.

Not sure where to start?  Microsoft provides five one-hour lessons and even provides support videos on YouTube to help students become familiar with the interface and hit the ground running with their critical thinking skills.  Then, let the coding begin!