Classroom STEAM Challenges

Use STEAM challenge cards/activities with your classroom curriculum to practice problem solving skills utilizing the STEAM concepts.

Why

Not every challenge covers all of these objectives. As a teacher, you can decide which ones and how many to focus on.

Planning

     •       Finding out if it is necessary or helpful to plan ahead

     •       Looking at different methods of planning

Collaboration / Team Work / Communication

     •       Practicing listening by allowing others to speak

     •       Testing out if comments that are too positive or too negative hinder brainstorming

     •       Trying out different roles such as Captain, Maker, Architect, Tester, Reporter

Resourcefulness

     •       Working with limited items

     •       Not wasting or destroying materials without purpose

Creativity

     •       See items in different lights

     •       Pretending

Problem Solving

     •       Analyze the pieces and any clues

     •       Getting desired results

     •       Dealing with design failures

Reflection

     •       Reviewing as an individual, group, and/or class

     •       Learning from mistakes and celebrating successes

Short Duration

     •       Introducing a new topic or unit

     •       Assessing prior knowledge

     •       Mixing things up with a change of pace

     •       Providing self-guided centers

Time management

     •       Paying attention to overall time and pacing

     •       Accomplishing goals within time limits

Ideas Adaptable for any Subject

Ready, Set, Design!

Tinker Studio #Challenges

       4 Engineering Challenges - cups, popsicle sticks, wooden cubes

       Challenge Box Cards (found at bottom of the page)

       Student Role Sheets (readable, printable version)

BP Challenges

Paper Table

Cardboard Chair

Make a Tall Hat (JK/K) - paper, scissors, tape; could be used as a pretest of fine motor skills such as using scissors to cut paper, ability to stay on task

Make something that is 3D (K/1/2) - paper, scissors, tape

Lego Builds

     Tinker Studio Lego Challenge

     Could be simple challenges such as making a particular shape, a face, or a house.

Build with Pasta - pasta and hot glue, can use gluten free pasta; for example, after learning about ferris wheels, students needed to design their own

Marshmallow Challenge - marshmallows, spaghetti

Cardboard Challenge - open ended or funnel it into a topic with a specific goal

     Global Cardboard Challenge

     Tinker Studio Cardboard

Challenges as optional at home projects - for reference if you want to take this type of approach or use one of their ideas

Gmail Canned Responses

Find yourself sending the same email repeatedly? For example, twice a year, I send out information to parents about signing up for parent/teacher conferences, and inevitably a few parents need the information emailed to them again. With this feature(lab) enabled in Gmail, I am able to enter the desired subject and body text into a blank email, save it as a canned response, and later use it to prepopulate a future correspondence.

Note: Canned responses will not save any attachments. I suggest saving the files to Google Drive with sharing set to anyone with the link and inserting this link in the canned response email.

Directions to enable this ability:

Open Gmail.

In the upper right, click the cog wheel and choose Settings.

At the top, click the tab for Labs.

Across from “Canned Responses,” click the bubble to Enable.

Scroll to the bottom, and click on Save Changes.

Google Docs Playback with Draftback

Draftback is a Chrome Extension that can be used on a laptop to view a “video” of a Google Doc being created - sped up of course. You will need to be the owner or an editor of the doc to do this (it does not work with view only access). Yes, Google has a revision history that can be found under File -> Version history —> See version history, but this method is more visual and allows you to see the document being created over time. Also, there is the option to see an informative timeline-like chart of the revisions made with the total editing time listed at the top. At the bottom is a list of who made edits to the doc and when.

This is helpful if you are trying to figure out the time spent working on a document or who contributed to it and when. If there were to be a copyright issue, the “video” playback would clearly show larger amounts of text being pasted in.

Directions:

Open Chrome.

Install the Draftback extension.

Open a Google doc that you have edit access to.

Near the Share button, there will now be a Draftback button - click it.

A little loading bar will start. Click View when it stops.

Watch the “video” document creation process.

On this screen, click the upper right link to “document graphs and statistics.”

Wire Jigs: Follow Up

After presenting this topic during a session at the ICE Conference this year, a few new ideas for the wire jig emerged. Visit Wire Jigs to see the original post.

Younger students may not do as well with hammers and nails and/or some schools/teachers may not be willing to take on the injury liability. Why not replace the wood with Styrofoam and use golf tees instead of the nails? Students could use a hammer like plastic toy or even a small ball to “nail” in the golf tees. For complete safety, substitute pipe cleaners for the wire.

To prevent or cut down on the possibility of students hitting themselves with the hammer when nailing, use a clothespin to hold the nail in place. These can be purchased cheaply at a place like a dollar store. I observed students in class, on their own, come up with the idea to use pliers to hold the nail, but the concept of the clothespin seems like a better and cheaper answer.

Another topic that surfaced was that some teachers with young students would like to make the wire designs with their students. One option is for the wire jig project to become a collaborative project with older students making the initial wooden jigs and then working with the younger students to wrap the wire. This way the younger students are not actually nailing and are better supervised when wrapping the wire around the jig. A second option would be for the teacher to make the initial wire jig for the students to wrap around wire or pipe cleaners.

The wire jig can be hard to follow once it is created since one project can have several nails. Remedy this by writing numbers or drawing arrows or lines directly on the wood to connect the nails and facilitate completion.

Wire Jigs

The needed supplies are cheap and the learning curve is small. Within a class period students can be on their way to making their own wire jigs. Wire jigs can be made to create jewelry, ornaments, symbols, constellations, outlines of items such as book characters, animals, U.S. states, countries, flowers, and leaves.

My first introduction to the idea of wire jigs was at last year’s Tinker Studio during the ICE Conference. Their take on it was that you could buy premade jigs for the students to use. I expanded the idea to allow for the students to be creative and own the process. This activity also introduces beginning shop safety (the use of hammers and nails), allows for creativity, and encourages trial and error.

Yes, you can easily buy a $10-20 Thing-A-Ma Jig at a store like Michaels or Jo-Ann. However, both the students and I found it difficult to secure the earring backing-like nubs onto the bottom of the pins to hold them in while making jewelry or designs.

Here is how my class got started:

Materials

Connect the dot selection for each table/group (extreme and regular versions)

Pencils

Picture of example jigs

Wood – 2”x6’ cut into 5 3/8” pieces ahead of time, 1 per pair

Nails – with skinny heads, 1 lb. box

Cups – to hold nails

Hammers (16oz an/or small 8oz stubby for younger students)

Wire Cutters (Diagonal Cutters)

Safety glasses

Wire – 20 gauge wire for practice and possible detail

Wire – 16 gauge annealed picture hanging wire – use for final project, the downside is it is harder to bend, but it will hold its shape really well

Procedure

1.    Students clear the tables of their belongings.

2.    Distribute connect the dot worksheet selection and pencils to each table. Students work for up to 10 minutes.

3.    As a class discuss how connect the dots have a precise order in which the dots need to be completed. Then, reference or model how the number of dots will affect the picture quality – especially, with rounded edges. This process is very similar to the wire jigs we are making.

4.    Demonstrate how they will be made:

a.     Work in pairs

b.    One block of wood

c.     Hammer lightly. Do not hammer the nail all the way in to make removal easier (students will remove the nails at the end to allow for reuse of the wood).

d.    Use only one side of the block, the other class will use the other side.

e.    Pro Tip: If attempting to make a specific picture, place a copy of the picture on top of the wood and hammer the nails into the picture directly to get a better outline.

Shop Rules

·      Wear safety glasses at all times.

·      Only use tools provided to you and for their intended purpose. Do not help yourself to any other tools.

·      If you are being silly, then you are sitting this one out.

·      Understand that you/we are trying something new – not everything is perfect.

5.    Once the nails are in, test the wire jig with the thinner wire to make sure it is really the desired pattern while noting the order to wind around the nails. When winding the wire, it is not recommended to make loops around the nails otherwise removal will be difficult.

6.    Create the final project. Before utilizing the thicker wire, hammer in any loose nails.

7.    When completed, remove the nails to reuse the block of wood for another design or to allow for use by another class/group.


For further ideas, see my other other post Wire Jigs: Follow Up.