St. Patrick's Day STEM Challenge: Paper Bridge Challenge

STEM Challenges are my favorite way to engage students during those times of the school year when keeping their attention might be almost impossible!  

You can still celebrate St. Patrick's Day while making the experience fun and educational for your students.  It is definitely a win-win situation for all involved!  

Plus, if you have a spring break scheduled around this time, a STEM Challenge would be a perfect activity to work into your plans to help keep students on task once you've wrapped up other coursework.

How does this St. Patrick's Day STEM Challenge work?

This St. Patrick's Day Paper Bridge STEM Challenge asks the students to create a paper bridge that will hold 100 pennies for 30 seconds to help the leprechaun transfer his gold coins to the bank.  

The new bridge must be made out of a limited amount of common household / classroom materials and completed with a certain amount of time.

Students will go through the STEM design process to create the leprechaun's new bridge.  The students will then test the bridge prototypes using pennies (or anything else you may have handy - like unifix cubes or washers).  Students will then make improvements to the bridge after the first trial to yield a stronger bridge for the second trial.

STEM Challenge Preview for Grades 3-5

The middle school kids in grades 5-8 are expected to identify the need, research the problem, design a solution by writing detailed procedures and sketching prototypes, build and test a prototype, and troubleshoot.  The younger students in grades 3-5 are asked to follow the same steps - but in a simpler way.  These kiddos will Ask, Imagine, Create, and Improve.

Your classroom will be buzzing with organized chaos as students collaborate on their designs!  It is always interesting to observe, as a facilitator, how the students are working together and which "roles" the students choose to take within the challenge.  

So, what should this paper bridge look like?

The great thing about a STEM Challenge is that there is not a cookie cutter "right answer" for the students to create.  

The students will amaze you with their creativity!  Often times, the students design prototypes that adults would never imagine from the limited amount of supplies provided within the challenge.

How do you measure the success of a STEM Challenge?

Of course, it is fun to cheer on the students to design the best prototype that will "win" the challenge.

But, as a teacher, the activity is a success when you observe your students actively following the STEM Design Process steps.

You see them critically thinking, creating, and analyzing the prototype's performance and design when troubleshooting.  Students have been activating those higher levels of thinking while having a wonderful time!  

Do you love this activity but don't have the time to design it yourself?  

A student handout, corresponding presentation, and detailed lesson plan is available in my TeachersPayTeachers store for grades 3-5 and grades 5-8 in either PowerPoint or SMART Notebook formats!

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Marshmallow Challenge

I look forward to sharing the Marshmallow Challenge with students every year.  The kids are already intrigued when you talk about anything with marshmallows, but they have no idea how much fun is in store for them during this class period!  Oh and science, too.  Fun and science is definitely a winning combination in my book.

This activity is an introduction to a STEM Challenge because students are designing prototypes of their marshmallow structure, but they are not formally following each step in the STEM Design Process.  The way this activity is structured allows student to naturally work without too much interference, which creates a fantastic talking point to bring up at the end of the activity.  Who stopped and tested, troubleshooted and adjusted?  Who built the structure as planned and only tested with a few seconds left?  What were the results for these different methods?  This will provide a lot of conversation as to why the STEM Design Process is important to follow in future STEM Challenges.

Another focus of this activity is to build collaboration and time-management skills.  The beauty of the Marshmallow Challenge is the way it allows people to work together and rally around each other.  For those reasons, this great activity can be used for any subject and any age.

So, how does it work?  Teams are challenged to design a free-standing marshmallow structure in 18 minutes with limited supplies that were provided by the teacher.  As the facilitator, you can acquire a lot of information about the people doing this activity as you walk around and observe.  Personality

traits will definitely appear - some will take charge while others hang back, some will build and build without testing along the way because they think they have a surefire plan for success, others will try something and test it then make changes along the way.  A teacher can definitely learn a ton about  the kids just in eighteen minutes!

Once the time is up, I like to have the kids throw their hands up in the air so we all know that no one is cheating and putting on any finishing touches.  Then, I walk around to measure any structures that are still standing with a meter stick.  The kids will wait with bated breath until I approach their table with the meter stick...hoping that the fragile marshmallow structure will last long enough "to count."  It's always fun to drum up friendly competition and offer a nice treat for the class champion - or even the grade level champion.  Students are always running into the classroom the next day to see what the grade level results were and how they compared.

In addition to the fun and games aspect of this activity, students are also critically thinking and collaborating.  All super important skills to activate and develop - especially after a long holiday or summer break!

Love this activity but short on time? Download either the SMART Notebook file or PowerPoint file that includes a visual aid for materials, activity guidelines, a timer slide, a data collection slide for class results, and extension questions as well as a detailed lesson plan and two-page student handout for planning and reflection.