Bringing Design and Innovation Into the Classroom
The end of the school year typically means lots of testing. Students are in the midst of the PARCC assessment. Afterwards, they can look forward to end of the year district assessments as well as final classroom quizzes and tests that teachers need to get in before the end of the school year. It is also a time of year that teachers get to experiment and test out ideas that they plan on implementing next school year. While I am always trying to implement new and innovative ideas, I try to really push the envelope towards the end of the year.
Our new science curriculum explores weather patterns. One of the investigations in the kit is to design a simple anemometer (an instrument that measures wind speed). Students are provided with a square piece of cardboard, four paper cups, and a piece of yarn. It walks them through the steps to build the pseudo anemometer:
Instead of having students follow the investigation, they were given the freedom to create their own designs. The initial directive was to incorporate a way to track the speed in their design. One student incorporated a speedometer in her original design, which got me thinking. I quickly went to Amazon to see if I could make a cheap purchase. Lo and behold, there was a bike speedometer for $12. One click and two days later, the speedometer was in the classroom and the design challenge was on.
Along with the task of designing, students were also tasked with taking pictures and videos. Each team created a Google Slide presentation documenting the design process. Some made pencil sketches, some made Google Drawings of their original ideas. As they built, many teams made changes to their designs. After three periods, most teams had working designs.
There were definitely some bumps along the way, many of which stemmed from not enough structure and guidelines.
For starters, students would have been more successful had I given a project timeline (i.e., research, design, build, test, modify, reflect).
Secondly, students would have benefited from a limitation of materials. There were too many options from students to choose from, which prolonged the design and build phases. Having too many materials presented another interesting problem that I had not thought about: wastage! Many students just grabbed materials and started incorporating them into their design. When their design didn't work, they would completely scrap the idea and start over. There was a lot of cups and straws in the garbage.
Lastly, while most teams were able to build a functioning anemometer, none of them were able to incorporate the speedometer into their design. They simply ran out of time. Again, if the project timeline was more structured, or if I had allowed the activity to go on for a couple of more days, some groups would probably been able to incorporate the speedometer.
Although the main objective wasn't accomplished, there was one
major success: establishing a growth mindset! It was clear through their reflections that students learned to embrace failure. When their initial approach did not work, they went back to the drawing board and tried another. The coolest thing to see was how this mindset carried into other subject areas. For example, students are in the process of writing research papers. Many students have drawn the comparison between the design process and writing process. I can tell that the project has had an impact on student thinking. If this mindset is established on day one of the school year, there is potential for massive growth!
Click here for more info on the challenge and to see student slideshows.
Our new science curriculum explores weather patterns. One of the investigations in the kit is to design a simple anemometer (an instrument that measures wind speed). Students are provided with a square piece of cardboard, four paper cups, and a piece of yarn. It walks them through the steps to build the pseudo anemometer:
- Put a cup on each corner of the cardboard square.
- Put a small hole in the center of the cardboard and feed the piece of yarn through the hole.
- Tie a knot in the yarn on the underside of the cardboard square.
- Mark one of the paper cups with a red magic marker.
As wind causes the anemometer to spin, students are to time how many revolutions the marked cup makes in thirty seconds. They then multiply that number by 2 to see how many revolutions would occur in one minute.
Instead of having students follow the investigation, they were given the freedom to create their own designs. The initial directive was to incorporate a way to track the speed in their design. One student incorporated a speedometer in her original design, which got me thinking. I quickly went to Amazon to see if I could make a cheap purchase. Lo and behold, there was a bike speedometer for $12. One click and two days later, the speedometer was in the classroom and the design challenge was on.
Along with the task of designing, students were also tasked with taking pictures and videos. Each team created a Google Slide presentation documenting the design process. Some made pencil sketches, some made Google Drawings of their original ideas. As they built, many teams made changes to their designs. After three periods, most teams had working designs.
There were definitely some bumps along the way, many of which stemmed from not enough structure and guidelines.
For starters, students would have been more successful had I given a project timeline (i.e., research, design, build, test, modify, reflect).
Secondly, students would have benefited from a limitation of materials. There were too many options from students to choose from, which prolonged the design and build phases. Having too many materials presented another interesting problem that I had not thought about: wastage! Many students just grabbed materials and started incorporating them into their design. When their design didn't work, they would completely scrap the idea and start over. There was a lot of cups and straws in the garbage.
Lastly, while most teams were able to build a functioning anemometer, none of them were able to incorporate the speedometer into their design. They simply ran out of time. Again, if the project timeline was more structured, or if I had allowed the activity to go on for a couple of more days, some groups would probably been able to incorporate the speedometer.Although the main objective wasn't accomplished, there was one
major success: establishing a growth mindset! It was clear through their reflections that students learned to embrace failure. When their initial approach did not work, they went back to the drawing board and tried another. The coolest thing to see was how this mindset carried into other subject areas. For example, students are in the process of writing research papers. Many students have drawn the comparison between the design process and writing process. I can tell that the project has had an impact on student thinking. If this mindset is established on day one of the school year, there is potential for massive growth!Click here for more info on the challenge and to see student slideshows.
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