MA STEM Week

MA STEM week was at the end of October and Fuller Meadow students were excited to take part. The World Series happened to start during MA STEM Week, which inspired me to think of an activity that integrated both special events.
On our school Red Sox Day, I presented the class with a problem:

 

Students had to work in pairs to design and build a bat strong enough to hit a Pom-Pom so that Mookie Betts could hit a home run.
First, as a class, we decided possible materials:

Then students got to work with their partners, drawing their initial designs and then gathering materials to start building.

After the initial prototype was put to the test, students had the opportunity to go back and revise their design.  The groups who thought a cutout paper bat would work, quickly realized they needed something more sturdy and stronger like cardboard or toilet paper rolls.

Here are a few groups trying out their first attempts at creating a bat.  Sorry for the shaky camera footage, the great engineering thinking was too good to not share ;).

Check out one example of the types of revisions that took place.

We ended the week with a STEM challenge that our Digital Learning Specialist, Mrs. Baker, presented to students to tie in with our Global Read Aloud book You Hold Me Up.
Students worked in pairs to use 40 blocks to see how high they could build a tower that could hold a plastic cup. 

 After they measured and recorded their first tower, they were given the task to build a tower even taller.  Could they build it as tall as a piece of paper?

We had fun working together, helping each other out, and engineering a tower that was tall yet wide enough to support a cup.

Thanks, Mrs. Baker, for sharing this fun STEM lesson!

We are looking forward to future classroom opportunities to work on STEM projects!