As you may know this week is National Engineers' Week. Since all of our girls have been introduced to engineering through our STEM for ALL initiative, we celebrated the last few year by reaching our to our parent community. Today, our team had approximately 40 female family members join us during their child's Math/Science block to compete against their children in an Inchworm STEM Challenge.
It is one of my personal favorites not only because of the rich math and science conversations our students have with each other while working in groups, but also because this challenge is just so stinking adorable!
For this challenge, students are tasked with creating a device carrying a load of 5 jumbo paperclips to be carried by a wind up toy inchworm. This week, the students researched and shared information about Newton's 3 Laws of Motion and designed a device to pull the paperclips following several constraints. We recently finished our unit on percents so it we had the students wind their inchworms up as far as it would go and test the distance they would travel with no load. Then the students attached their loads and let the worms go again. The winning team was the one with the greatest percent of their initial distance traveled after attaching the load.
Here is the challenge for your reference:
The students and parents had a fantastic time! It is always nice to get parents in to see what their children do. School looks so different that when we were in school. This gives them a little bit of a peek into the daily life of their students, and allows teachers time to build relationships with their students parents. One parent commented that it was nice to be invited in for something that did not involve sorting or repetitive cutting and pasting. All of the ladies that joins us this morning had a great time.
Here are a few of my favorite pictures from today's event:
Team WOW (MOM upside down) Tests one of their Prototypes
Reflecting on their prototypes before rebuilding.
Our moms/grandmas/aunt team works discusses the pros and cons of their prototype.
This one did not win the challenge, but it sure has style!
Grandma helps her granddaughter's team.
This mom team gets a motion lesson from one of our science teachers.
Testing Prototypes
Building is fun!
Possibilities for extensions:
I have used this challenge with more advanced students and had them write proportions and calculate their inchworm's percent of change.
What are your favorite STEM Challenges? How do you involve parents in your classroom?
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