Indicator 6.C

6.C- Create learning opportunities that challenge students to use a design process and computational thinking to innovate and solve problems.

Reflection

For this artifact I chose a STEM Challenge that my first grade team and I did with our students. Every year we teach our students about the history of Thanksgiving. At the conclusion of this unit we like to have a fun activity for our students to complete. The STEM Challenge requires students to make the boat the Mayflower out of aluminum foil. The boat has to float and carry pilgrims across the water. To represent the pilgrims we use pennies. The challenge is which group can carry the most pilgrims in their boat with out it sinking.

This is a really great activity to show teamwork skills and creativity. The students have to work together to first design what their boat should look like and then they have to test out their boat to see if their design works. It really teaches the students how to listen to each other’s ideas and put their brains together to figure out what ideas will work best. We do give them two additional chances to refine their idea after testing out their design. On the final trial we make a chart of each groups total number of pilgrims on the boat before it sank. Then we looked at the design of the winning boat and talked about why their ship was able to hold the most.

I love doing this activity with my students every year. It is so engaging and allows my students to use the design process to solve a problem. Teaching first grade, I didn’t always know that you could create STEM Challenges for such a young group of children. It is so surprising the great ideas these little minds will come up with if you just present them with the right type of challenge. They amaze me everyday and I hope to continue to find more engaging STEM challenges for my class to complete.