DISD STEM Day

By Anne Marie Burdick

This year at Dallas Independent School District’s (DISD) Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Day, I had the privilege of working with five students. STEM Day allows students from all grade levels to discover different ways these content areas are stimulating and intriguing. Integrating STEM into daily lessons gives students the opportunity to complete hands on activities and it allows teachers to present new content in another way other than basic lectures. On January 31, I presented a lesson that consisted of marshmallows, toothpicks, paper plates, and pennies. During this lesson students used these objects to create unique structures for the three little pigs. I got my idea from this lesson and made appropriate adjustments so it fit my purpose.

Retrieved from http://cubsindia.com/the-three-little-pigs/

In my activity, How Smart Was the Big Bad Wolf?, I created a new chapter to the original story of The Three Little Pigs. The big bad wolf came down with a terrible case of laryngitis and could no longer destroy the pigs’ homes by blowing them down, so he was now going to destroy them by crushing them from the tops. When the pigs went to go buy their homes, they needed to make sure the structures could hold a lot of weight. The pigs hired my students to construct and engineer their new homes so they could live in safety and peace. After my students used their knowledge of geometry, they tested their structures by putting a paper plate on top and adding pennies on it until the structure started to collapse. The house that held the most pennies was bought by the three little pigs and that student won the challenge.

           
My goal for this lesson was to provide my students with an opportunity to use their knowledge of geometry, forces in physics, problem solving, and engineering in an invigorating way. I chose this activity because I wanted the students to be creative in the ways they were using their knowledge of geometric shapes and prisms to determine how their homes could hold the most weight. My students soon realized that triangular prisms were the best way to build their house compared to cubes. They also came to the conclusion that it mattered how they distributed their pennies on their structures. When the pennies were evenly dispersed on the plate instead of on one side, their homes were able to hold more pennies. For example, this photo to the right shows how a student's structure started to collapse because there were too many pennies dispersed on the right side. If they had been evenly dispersed he may have been able to add more. The student who had the strongest home was able to place more than 300 pennies on top.

           

After reflecting on how my lesson went, I decided that it was a success. The students loved the challenge of competing with one another to create a stronger structure. They were also thrilled to be able to do a hands on activity. From my personal experience, students tend to have positive reactions when they are given the opportunity to create something physically. Instead of sitting through another mundane lecture, they are discussing their knowledge of physics, engineering, and geometry to solve a real world scenario. I have found that when students are able to personally connect to they problem, that they learn more of the content and that they are more motivated to solve the issue at hand. If I had more time with my students I would have had them create their structure to a larger scale to see if it could hold just as many pennies if not more. I feel like I accomplished the task of getting students excited about STEM related concepts and I feel like the day went better than expected.