Celebrating National STEM Day by Putting the M in STEM

    November 8 was National STEM Day.  When a colleague came in my room a couple of days before that to ask what I was going to do for National STEM Day....I'll be honest.  My first thought was, "I'm so far behind my pacing guide....I can't afford to do ANYTHING!".  But as I sat and thought about it, I came to the same conclusion I've come to several times since attending Space Camp....my job is not only to teach kids math skills, but to inspire them to want to learn math.  My job is to show them that math could be a part of their future, and that it could be a good thing.

     So I decided that I would do a STEM activity, because my students needed that chance to be creative, and work collaboratively, and do so many other things that STEM can do in the classroom.  And I did work in some important math from my standards (even if it wasn't exactly what my pacing guide said I should be doing!).

     The challenge for my students this time:  To build a tower with a shelf at the top that could hold at least two quarters.  Students had a limited amount of "credits" to spend, and they got bonus points for unspent credits.  They also got bonus points if their tower could hold more than two quarters.  Each group had to draw three cards that guided their building.  The cards had inequalities that gave students criteria they had to meet for tower height, base area and shelf area.

       

      I don't know about your students, but in 7th grade, many of my students still struggle with inequality symbols.  There were many discussions throughout the day about the meaning of the cards.  "Does this mean our tower can be 5 inches, or does it have to be taller?"  "Does the area of the base have to be more or lesss than 6 square inches?"  "How big is 3 square inches?"  I find the open-ended activities like this are a great chance for formative assessment for me, if I listen to the students having conversations with each other.  For this lesson, I could definitely tell that many of my students didn't fully understand inequality symbols, as well as the difference between inches and square inches.

     After a short introduction, my students ended up with about 30 minutes to work on this STEM challenge.  That seemed to be just about the right amount of time.  Because students got extra points for unspent credits, they were very careful about material use.  That was one nice thing about this STEM challenge....the materials ended up being really cheap!  The things I had available were graph paper, index cards, tape, staples, straws, foil (cut in 2" squares) and pipe cleaners.

     My student creations were AMAZING!  I had one group that used a single piece of paper, and built a 5 inch tower that held 15 quarters.  I had groups in every hour that build towers so sturdy that 30 quarters wasn't enough to topple them (I realized in 1st hour that I had to put a limit on how many extra points they could get for sturdiness....one group of boys built a tower that held 5 huge library books and still hadn't toppled!).  Students were engaged, creative, and working hard....STEM for the win!

     The next day, I used this as a chance to teach kids how to graph inequalities on the number line.  In each class, I had a handful of students that remembered learning this in 6th grade, but the majority did not.  Using the cards from the STEM challenge, student quickly understood how to graph inequalities.   I feel like this made it well worth it to have take the time to do the STEM challenge.

If you're interested in this Inequality STEM Challenge lesson, you can get it at my TpT store.