STEM Workshop for Teachers

I ran a workshop for teachers a couple of weeks ago.  I have been trying to get this post up, but we had a week off of school due to snow and frigid weather.  Then, our pipe burst, but now the kids are back in school, the work is being done on the house to repair all the damage and I am trying to get this posted.

I presented a bit of background information, then we went into the why's and wherefore's of teaching engineering design to elementary school students.  There are those who are of the opinion that we should not be teaching kids any type of "engineering" because they are too young and it is just a dumbed down idea of building stuff.  However, I am of the mind that kids love to make things, and yes, all right, they can't design a bridge that would meet the safety codes for use on a highway, but we can give them the tools and excite them about how the science they are learning in school can be used and is used everyday all around them.  So, what is the harm in having them pretend to be engineers?  I think it would be so much better to have them pretend to be engineers than supermodels or secret agents.

So, why do we want to use hands-on engineering type problems to teach children science concepts?  Just think of the following study of the retention of students presented with material to learn:


§10% retention with reading only
§26% retention with hearing only
§30% retention with seeing only
§50% retention with seeing and hearing
§70% retention with seeing, hearing, and repeating,

§90% retention if learner saw, heard, repeated or said something about topic, and used ideas 

 (You can find more about these ideas in *Teaching Engineering, Wankat and Oreovicz, McGraw-Hill, 1993, Chapter 15, “Learning Theories”.)

      So, a hands-on experience can give a student a 90% retention of the ideas presented because they will have seen the material, heard the teacher talk about it, then they will repeat or talk about it among themselves and will think and use the ideas in their assigned activities.  This is only a bit of what I covered, but one of the most important points, I think.  After finishing the presentation, I gave the teachers a chance to have fun with a hands-on activity themselves.  I challenged them to think like a Greek or Roman and build a simply support bridge.  Their challenge was to build a bridge holding the most coins.  I used nickels simply because they weigh 5 grams each and are easy to count for most young students (2nd and 3rd graders).  (Just for your information, pennies weight approximately 2.5 grams which is a bit more of a challenge for calculating weight.)  For the first part of the challenge, the teachers could use only one sheet of paper a bit of tape and no other tools.  For the next challenge, they can use a fresh sheet of paper but scissors in addition to more tape.  Here are the teachers having fun with their challenge.  I must say the activity got a bit competitive between the teams!

I did see quite a few approaches to the challenge.  The most common approach was to fold the paper, but you can see that one group tried a fan approach and another group used the idea of the covered bridge design.  I encouraged them to think like Greeks and Romans, but no one used the idea of columns in their designs, but all had fun and it encouraged them to think of new ways to get the students engaged.  

I am looking forward to hearing about how they will include hands-on design activities in their classes in the coming months.  

If your school is interested in a fun workshop about STEM and design in the classroom then please contact me.

Magnets for 2nd Grade

Here are the STEM activities for magnets for 2nd grade.  The first four activities in this set came from Janice Van Cleave's book called Magnets (1993).   She has written many books with great activities.  The four used below are all tried and true, and have been used for the last 6 years in class.  These activities try to get the students thinking about the strength of the magnetic field and how it can be disrupted.  The last activity is from the Exploratorium snacks page.  Three magnets are placed on a platform and a fourth is suspended from a string and the magnet on the string is set in motion.  The magnets cause the motion of the hanging magnet to be chaotic.  Second graders obviously will not have a good grasp of this idea, but is a fun activity and they do understand the idea of predictability.

Virginia Standards

2.1 Scientific Investigation
2.2 Force, Motion, and Energy

Next Generation Science Standards
K-2-ETS1-1 Engineering Design
2-PS1-1.A Matter
3-PS2-3 Magnetic Interations

First Grade: Playing with Liquids

Staying on the water and liquids theme, here are four experiments for the first graders that mostly came from Janice Van Cleave.  She has lots of great books about various science topics.  For these activities I started with some of her ideas and expanded on them.  Again, I set up four tables and had a volunteer at each table to oversee the experiments with the students.  For the liquid density experiment, I would have the volunteer  run the experiment because it could get so messy.  However, the kids love to see all of the liquids poured into one container and see them separate just as they predicted on their data sheets.

These meet the following standards:

Virginia Science Standards

• 1.1 Scientific Reasoning
• 1.3 Matter
• 1.8 Resources

The Next Generation Science Standards

• K-2-ETS1.1 Engineering Design
• 2-PS1-1.A Matter
• KESS3.C Human Impact on Earth

Kindergarten - Water Exploration

This is a unit that I do with the kindergarten classes.  In Virginia, the students study water and do the classic sink and float experiments.  In this unit, I introduce prediction and observation through water play.  There are many concepts in here that are a bit complex for kindergarten students, but you can get the ideas across using simple examples.  Some of the children will "get it" right away, and others might not understand very much, but they will remember the experiments.

Here are the standards that these experiments address:

Virginia Standards

• K.1  Scientific Reasoning
• K.5  Matter

Next Generations Science Standards

• K-2 ETS1-1  Engineering Design
• 2-PS1-1.A  Matter

I try and do these experiments outside in the fall or spring.  Depending on how much you let the children do they can get a bit wet.  I use square wash tubs to hold the water.  All the materials are readily available.  I have seen various versions of these experiments in books and through the web.   I have a set-up of four stations per classroom, which means there would need to be four adults available. The session is set to run in 45 minutes with about 10 minutes at each station.  The files are loaded as jpg files.  If you want them in a pdf format or word you can email me for those files.

Changing Focus

As time has passed, my kids are growing older, and my son is midway through middle school and my daughter is almost through elementary school.  I am still running sessions at the elementary school, but not as many.  I have decided maybe the best way to get more people involved is to start posting all of my work on the site in hopes that other people will take it and use it.  My work has mainly been a compilation of experiments from books, the web, and many that I have developed.  Where the experiment is unique, I have given credit for the experiment or idea.  Experiments that I have found in multiple locations, I have not referenced one or the many, and in most cases I have modified the experiments to suit our needs.  The experiments range from science related to various topics to design exercises.

I hope that people will find them useful.

I will try to load one or two a week until I get through them all.  I will start with Kindergarten, go through the grades until I have all of my work uploaded.  They will be uploaded as jpg files.  If you find them useful, you can contact me and I will be happy to email you a pdf or word file.

I will still teach workshops for teachers and run sessions at the schools when asked.  Just contact me if you want more information.

Brushbots After School

We have a great after school program at my children's elementary school.  People from around the community come in to teach different subjects including:  jewelry making, cooking, gardening, karate, skateboarding, soccer, basketball, tennis, running, sewing, fashion design, legos, etc.  You name it, and there is probably a class for it.  I decided to offer a class in building brush bots for fourth and fifth graders.  The fourth graders learn about circuits in class and build a simple circuit using aluminum foil, a battery and a small light bulb.  Building on this, I decided to offer them a chance to build their own brushbots.

A brushbot is a circuit with a vibrating motor on top of a brush such as a nailbrush or toothbrush.

The kits are a bit pricey ($15-20), so I decided to make my own using a nailbrush, a battery holder, a switch, and a motor.  I had the motors from another project but had gotten them for about $1.00 each, the battery holder was $2.00, the nailbrush, $1.00 from Target and the switch was $3.50 at Radioshack.  So the total cost for my brushbot was $7.50.  It could have been cheaper if I had bought the components in bulk from internet supply stores, but I had only 4 kids in the class, so Radioshack was convenient.

Above are three of the bots built by the fourth and fifth graders.  They had a great time building them and felt a real sense of accomplishment when we got them all up and running.

Here is another photo.  The main problem we had was getting the kids to make a good connection to the various components with the wires and then taping them with electrical tape.  For some of the kids, it was a bit challenging.  But, after a few tries, most of them got pretty adept at wiring.  The other problem we ran into was balancing the bots so they vibrated without falling over.  That task involved moving the components around on top of the brushes until we got them balanced.  I used balanced motors, so to get the motors unbalanced to allow them to vibrate we attached alligator clips.  Today, the kids will finish making there vibrating bugs.  I will show photos of those next week.

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