Year 3/4 Bulletin

STEM CHALLENGE

STEM challenges support the development of critical and creative thinking, problem-solving and persistence. The challenges are suitable for all ages and can be undertaken individually or involve the whole class. However, working in a team supports the development of skills in communication, teamwork and collaboration. Each challenge is built around the design thinking process. 

The Tower of Power

Learning Intention: To explore how to communicate and problem solve within a team

Task: Tower of Power

1. Build the tallest and strongest tower out of spaghetti and blu-tac
2. The tower must stand unaided for at least 30 seconds
3. Emphasis on group communication, leadership dynamics, collaboration, innovation and problem solving strategy

Learning experience:

We began the lesson by watching a video about how tall we could build a tower. It was followed by a discussion about the different factors that affect a tower and its height. It was important for students to identify these as it assisted with their designs and helped them understand how to make the tower both tall and strong.

Next we split the classes into mixed groups, based on random selection rather than friendships, in order to aid in how students choose to communicate with other students they may not learn with on a regular basis. This allowed for more interesting conversations, negotiations and problem solving communication skills to thrive.

Our planning phase asked students to record their ideas on a plan, identifying the structure outline and drawing the design.

Photos:

Results:

We found a few challenges that made the structure quite difficult to raise.

Student responses included:

• The towers kept breaking as the spaghetti was too fragile
• Alot of communication was hard because we had to listen to each other's ideas so we could progress
• Everyone had really different ideas so it was hard to choose one
• It was difficult to decide on a design
• We had to keep coming up with different ideas 
• We had a small amount of resources (even though all the groups had the same amount)

Reflection:

Upon reflection, we decided that if we were to do this activity again, what would we like changed:

• More blu-tac
• More time
• More spaghetti

What you can do at home:

Discuss with your child what it is like to take ourselves outside of our comfort zones. Provide examples from your own experiences to instil that it is not just in school we learn with different people, but as we get older, within different environments, it is important to learn and know different communication skills.