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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
All Pakistan Muttahida Students Organization(APMSO) urged upon President Asif Zardari, Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, Governor Sindh Dr Ishratul Ebad and Chief Minister Sindh Syed Qaim Ali Shah to establish new government engineering universities in Sindh particularly Karachi due to the increasing demand of engineering education in Pakistan. There are only two major government engineering institutes in Karachi,NED and Dawood College of Engineering and Technology(DCET).NED offers around two thousand seats for its various faculties for all the students where as there are around 170 seats only for Karachi students in DCET.Most students can not afford the tution fees of private varsities of Karachi so there is an urgent need to establish new engineering universities in Karachi so that the students can get more chances to study in the engineering programs.
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.
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.
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!
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).
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!
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:
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
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
Activists of a student political party tortured Arshad Baig,the principal of Dawood College of Engineering and Technology(DCET) today. Teachers have boycotted the classes in protest till further orders.
