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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
As we focus on STEM skills that can be achieved through short (or long) duration projects, we're aiming to develop skills that employers are seeking.
According to The 9 Attributes Every Employer Desperately Wants, Forbes magazine examines the skills that make a candidate great. Among the list, some great core STEM skills like natural curiosity, uncompromising excellence, unlimited versatility, self-awareness, and creative problem solving.
This week's challenge allows students to explore the thee core STEM skills as the explore high-impact space debris by designing and building a spacesuit for their astronaut (potato) and testing its effectiveness.
As you'll note from pretty much all of my other posts, I'm a huge proponent of STEM in the younger grades. So, connecting STEM through literature is a natural extension (and quite a powerful tool). This connection helps to improve reading skills, yet also enhance creativity and critical thinking skills.
In this series, we will further examine the connection between literature- specifically fairy tales- and STEM. Each week we'll take a look at a favorite fairy tale, make a connection to STEM and tie each one to the NGSS Engineering Design Standards.
Join me next week for a look at our first fairy tale!
Even though the STEM acronym stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, there are a wide range of skills that this acronym encompasses.
Employers are quick to mention that these are the core skills that they are starting to look for in well qualified candidates. Those "soft skills" are the focus of the STEM Skills Challenges.
This week, students will work with partners to design and build a catapult that will launch mini marshmallows towards a designated target. In this challenge, students will need to make good materials choices as they can only use three of the four materials provided. As students experiment, they will work to build a reliable and well-designed catapult, but also establish consistency in hitting a designated target like a bulls eye. (Teachers may also wish to use small pom poms instead of mini marshmallows.)
This Brown bag series gave me a chance to dig through my files and share some more STEM Challenge oldies-but-goodies.
In each post, I've shared different engineering design projects that are appropriate for a wide age range. All of these activities work to prove that you don't need an endless budget to teach STEM and promote STEM principles and skills.
Here's a recap of the project ideas shared in this series:
In aiming to provide students with engaging STEM challenges that push the envelope on developing students' critical thinking skills, this series also aims to develop the STEM skills that employers seek in the workforce.
This week's challenge is the Plastic Cup Pyramid. Using a rubber band and some string, students will fashion an apparatus that will transfer plastic cups from their current configuration into a pyramid. This is a great challenge to build communication and teamwork skills. For teams that finish early, reverse the challenge and have students complete it without talking. Now that's a challenge!
This challenge takes a little more time than some others, but it is worth it to watch students build a "stock" hot air balloon then work to design their own hot air balloon that stays aloft longer.
Materials Tissue Paper Glue Sticks Scissors Copy Paper Staplers Hair Dryers (with "low" or "cool" setting) OR Hot Air Popcorn Popper Stopwatches
In this challenge, student begin by building the same hot air balloon. I like to have teams of three for this project, simply because it is more involved and requires students to follow specific directions for this first round. I'm also a bug fan of assigning jobs, so I prefer to divide up the work like this:
Navigator- Reads the directions to the team
Surveyor- Makes any measurements and checks work
Manufacturer- Glues, and assembles materials
Directions can be found all over the internet. I personally like the Junior Balloonist plans or the directions provided by the Civil Air Patrol (who use the directions from Pitsco).
Students follow the directions to build this balloon using the directions and test it, being sure to record their "flights" using 30 seconds of hot air. Once students establish a time to beat (I usually let each team launch once and average their times to get the time to beat.)
Then, students will design their own hot air balloons striving for them to stay aloft longer.
So, what did we learn? Next Generation Science Standards: Planning and Carrying out Investigations, Designing Solutions; Obtaining, Evaluating and Communicating Information CCC- Patterns, Scale, Proportion, and Quantity
CCSS Math: Measurement and Data, Geometry, Ratios and Proportional Relationships
Over the past couple of weeks, I've been sharing the importance of teaching STEM skills and weaving them through your curriculum. They teach our students how to be persistent problem solvers, how to deepen 21st century skills and how to become leading contenders in the workforce.
Forbes Magazine researched the 10 most critical skills that employers are looking for in candidates and found that the majority of these critical skills are STEM skills. The top three skills? Critical Thinking, Complex Problem Solving, and Judgement and Decision Making.
This week, students will get to practice all three of those skills as they work on this week's Skills Challenge. Students will work with a team to build a sturdy table out of nothing more than newspaper and masking tape that will hold the most weight. Much like the real world, teams will be challenged to use only the resources provided and work within design and time requirements. May the best team of designers win!
Have you ever played the shooting gallery game at the carnival? Here's a STEM twist on that carnival game for students...a slingshot gallery.
Materials Slingshot Targets* Rubber Bands Craft PomPoms Popsicle Sticks Tape Other Fun Found Objects
*Download the Slingshot Targets sheet and photocopy it onto cardstock. Students will cut the targets apart and fold them to test their slingshot designs.
For this Challenge, students are tasked with building a working slingshot that will knock down the designated targets from a distance of 60 cm (24 inches). Students can work in pairs, but I like each student to design and build their own slingshot. It shows more ownership and also results in each student having their own data to analyze later.
In addition to establishing a required distance to "fling" from, I like to also require other parameters based on age group (Everyone must use at least 4 different supplies.) or based on available supplies to increase the difficulty (Everyone must use a paper cup in their design.) Adjusting these parameters allows me to differentiate the challenge, even within the same classroom.
So, what did we learn? Next Generation Science Standards: Planning and Carrying out Investigations, Designing Solutions; CCC- Patterns, Systems and System Models
Say those words to your students and you're sure to get a reaction. Who doesn't want to have a little fun by designing and building a marshmallow slingshot? But this isn't just a time-filler; it's a great little STEM challenge for kids of all ages. Using some basic supplies, students can review the Engineering Design Process and embark in this design, build, test project.
Start with some basic supplies for each team:
2 toilet-paper tubes (or 1 paper-towel tube, cut in half)
Tape
Single-hole punch (optional)
Pencil pen or marker
2 thin rubber bands
Scissors
Marshmallow (Large)
Then, let the designing begin!Challenge your students to design and create a marshmallow launcher (slingshot, trebuchet, or whatever) that will meet your design requirements.
What are your design requirements? We've already outlined the required supplies (and you can modify these based on availability), so we just need to define the challenge. Should we design a launcher that:
will launch a marshmallow the furthest? (distance)
will hit a designated target? (accuracy)
will keep the marshmallow aloft the longest? (time)
Or, work with students to design a challenge of your own. Whatever the challenge, students and teacher alike are sure to have an engaging STEM lesson. For an inspirational video to introduce this lesson, visit the PBS Kids Design Squad page. (There are also detailed instructions for building a specific kind of launcher, but that takes the fun out of the challenge!)
During this series on STEM Skills Challenges, we are focusing on the soft-skills that help make our students well-rounded and, according to local businesses, more employable.
This week's challenge is an individual challenge that will exercise student creativity as well as math skills.
For this challenge, students will work individually to design and construct a paper airplane that will carry the maximum amount of paperclips the farthest distance.
This tricky little challenge will require some thought and planning in working with multiple variables, but will help students to think critically about how to obtain the highest point value.
In this challenge, students are asked to design a mechanism that will hold a lilypad and help a "frog" jump up into your hand!
Materials Plastic Eggs Frog Patterns Transparent Tape Paint Stirrers (Wooden Rulers or similar) Empty Water bottles Other found items
Students work in pairs to construct a mechanism that will launch their plastic frog to a height tall enough that a student can catch it. Students first construct their frogs by cutting out the pattern and taping it to the front and back of the egg. They should bend down the frog legs so that the frog sits on the lilypad.
Using the supplied materials, students can construct their mechanism. Most students design a sort of see-saw/catapult contraption using the ruler or the paint stirrer, but the items provided by the teacher may frame the challenge differently.
So, what did we learn? Next Generation Science Standards: Asking Questions and Defining Problems, Planning and Carrying out Investigations, Designing Solutions; CCC- Patterns, Cause and Effect, Systems and System Models
CCSS Math: Operations and Algebraic Thinking, Functions,Expressions and Equations
Employers today are looking for students who have learned how to think and how to problem-solve. With the adoption of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), we are getting closer to making that a reality, but so many states and districts are still focused on standardized testing (which- surprise- did not make the list of qualities that employers are looking for in qualified candidates.)
This series focuses on those skills as well as the other "soft-skills" that aren't necessarily spelled our in the curriculum, but make students well-rounded problem solvers.
This week's challenge is the Gumdrop Bridge. In this challenge, students work in teams to design and build a bridge that will span 10 inches. Sounds like a pretty easy challenge, but as students start experimenting with their materials of gum drops and toothpicks, they will find that there is more there than beats the eye.
This fun little challenge encourages students to work on team building, collaboration and communication skills- more of those soft skills- that help students become successful in a workplace environment.
What if STEM stood for something different? As you know, the actual acronym stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, but aside from content, the concept encompasses many more essential skills like: problem solving, critical thinking, team-building, self-esteem, self-motivation and more.
At a recent symposium in the Seattle area, business leaders were surveyed regarding the skills, attitudes, attributes, and aspirations that they feel are the most important to the success of students in the future. Among the results?
Critical thinking, learning, and analytical problem solving
Communication
Adaptability
Collaboration and teamwork
Self-direction and self-awareness
Technical skills and computer literacy
Fundamentals of education including math, science, and English
Creativity
Cultural competence and global awareness
Emotional intelligence
This series on STEM Skills Challenges will harness the power of STEM challenges and focus on these essential success skills that our students need to be effective in the STEM workforce.
For this week, I thought we'd explore the use of derby cars to teach STEM. Not the pinewood kind that the boy scouts make, but a variation of that using a clothespin as the car body. In this challenge, students will each build their own derby car, but will work with a partner for support. Students are challenged to design the derby car that will complete the "track" the fastest.
Materials Clothespins (one per student) Buttons, Spearmint Lifesavers, Wagon Wheel pasta, etc. Straws Masking Tape Thin Wire (such as twist ties, floral wire, etc.) Foam Pipe Insulation (one 6ft length for every 2 groups) Stopwatches (1 per group)
I like to use the foam pipe insulation as the track because it is inexpensive and flexible. You can buy the non-stick kind in six foot lengths very cheaply at your local hardware store. Using scissors, cut it lengthwise to make two derby car tracks. For more advanced students, you can require that their track involve a number or curves or loops. For beginners, the track can be taped to a wall at a particular height.
Students can build their cars using any of the materials. Generally, students will place the front axle in the hole at the front of the clothespin and the second in the back somewhere, securing it with tape. However, there is no rule that the clothespin must be the body. Students can construct their derby car however they like.
So, what did we learn? Next Generation Science Standards: Developing and Using Models, Planning and Carrying Out Investigation, Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information ; CCC- Scale, Proportion and Quantity Cause and Effect
CCSS Math: Operations and Algebraic Thinking, Measurement and Data, Expressions and Equations
I always thought that the Egg Drop was a really cool project. You know, the one where you design a protective pod for a raw egg and then drop it from a balcony to see if it worked? Fantastic...until you factor in the children and well, the actual raw eggs. Then it all goes downhill rather fast.
So I've been thinking of ways to modify this activity so that it is more sanitary and less messy. Voila! Pringle Pod.
Materials Found Objects such as paper towel rolls, bubble wrap, etc. Measuring Tape, Seamstress Tape Pringles brand potato chips (because they are uniform in size and shape)
Students work in pairs or teams to construct a protective pod for their pringle. Students' designs must not exceed 3 inches in any one direction and they may not modify the chip or coat it.
Because this of modification of using a pringle in lieu of an egg, it is not necessary to drop the pods from a very large height. I like to have students drop their designs from increasing heights starting with 1 foot. Once they reach a failure point, they can redesign to see if they can beat their best height.
So, what did we learn? Next Generation Science Standards: SEP- s, Defining Problems, Analyzing and Interpreting Data; CCC- Patterns, Cause and Effect
CCSS Math: Cause and Effect, Scale, Proportion and Quantity, Measurement and Data,Expressions and Equations
