#OnceUponAnEngineeringChallenge

#OnceUponAnEngineerChallenge

Every year in the Spring my team and I take a couple weeks to intentionally teach Engineering to our
students. As a STEM school of choice, we noticed a lack of intentional engineering lessons that were
grade level appropriate for our littles. So we did what most Teachers do and turned to inspirations from
Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers(TPT) to help find some resources to begin creating dynamic
engineering learning experiences for our students. We found some wonderful resources on TPT that
were themed fairy tale engineering challenges. We used these resources to help build our 2 week
engineering learning experience. Each teacher on our team does this process a little different, so I will
write about my experience and am going to focus on the main engineering challenge we do in my class.

During fairy tale week, we incorporate the unit into the math we are currently on and into literacy by
reading books and identifying characteristics. Throughout the year we do little challenges that help
students to learn the engineering process leading up to the big fairy tale engineering unit.  

We begin by reading the original 3 little pigs. Then I start incorporating the engineering challenge.
The following is a Day by Day lay out of the process.

DAY 1: I start by having students watch a video or have someone come in and talk about construction
and engineering. Then I put students into intentional teams ( teams with several strong leaders, several
quiet students together, etc). THIS IS NEVER THE FIRST time students work in groups for an
engineering challenge, they have done a couple other little challenges in a variety of groupings
(2 people to build a bridge, groups of 3 to build a boat, groups of 4 to collaborate on creating a habitat).
For this challenge teams are dependent on class size but usually not larger than 5 students. The first
thing students are tasked with in their team is to come up with a Construction company name.

DAY 2/3: We talk with or watch a short video on what a graphic designer is and what they do for their job.
Then in their Construction companies the teams are tasked with creating a logo that will represent their
company. I give every child a piece of graphing paper and 10-15 minutes to draw independently. Then
after the allotted time students come together with their team to share about their design and why they
decided to make this design. Then teams have to choose one design to use. The team is given a blank
white paper, where they make their final design. During this time I really try not to interject into
conversations and will never solve their problems. If I do talk with groups I ask questions or simply
restate what I heard others say in the discussion. Sometimes this activity needs multiple days, just
depends on the class and the time that can be allotted for this activity.

Day 4: Now that the construction companies have their names and logos, we start to talk about the bid
that is on the table. The three little pigs need a new house that will fit all of them comfortably and prevent
the wolf from entering. I then tell them that each team will build a model of a house for their potential
clients. As a class we start to talk about what things would you need to be successful in this project.
Students create a list of requirements that the house must have before going before the client to make a
choice. Common themes are a house with wolf protections and rooms for the pigs. I then talk to and
show students a video on what does an architect do and how to draw a blueprint. Students are given
graph paper to draw their blueprint individually for approximately 10-15 minutes. They then turn in their
design and I paperclip them to their company sign they made earlier.

 

Day 5: I give students back their blueprints and they talk about what they drew and why they decided to
make their specific architectural designs. After they conclude their sharing; students get to sample
building materials. I give 10-15 minutes to play with the materials they will be provided for the project
( paper tubes, cardboard boxes, straws, string, yarn, toothpicks, pipe cleaners, and Popsicle sticks).
Then after exploration time students go back and discuss which blueprint they think will work best for
their team and with the provided materials. I hand them another graph paper to be the master blueprint,
to be referred to for their construction process.

Day 6: This is the first official build day. I provide students with the exact materials that they had seen
and experimented with previously. Students are given their blueprints and reminded to try to stick to their
plan for building. This day I serve as the official cardboard cutter and safety monitor to their construction.
A couple things start to happen as teams start to build, teams either creatively start to find ways to make
their materials stick together ( using pipe cleaners around or through to connect pieces) or they start to
use our community supplies (glue sticks, or the students tape and/or staple dispensers). Students are
usually given at least 30 minutes of build time on the first day, without official connection materials.

Day 7: This is the day we talk about the concept of a wall, most teams are modeling their blueprint
exactly and so that means that the structures are pretty flat. I applaud the teams hard work and for
beginning construction on their models.We then take a gallery walk to look at the other teams models.
I bring them back and ask them what is something you noticed about the structures. One of the first
responses is almost always that they are all really flat. This spurs a discussion about wall I ask them
questions, what is a wall? What are some characteristics of a wall? Why are walls important? Are there
some other things that are important to a house? I then show them a video of the process of a house
being built that is sped up. Students are then sent back to construct, I also offer the opportunity to get
tape for their structures, but they are only able to ask for tape three times during building. Students are
given about 30 minutes of build time on this day.

Day 8: This is a full build day, I remind students of our requirements for th build.

Day 9: Model testing and build day. Students are allowed to use the Big Bad Wolf ( box fan only on the
low setting, they will have to pass all three settings for the final test) to test their designs and then go
back and redesign if they think it is needed. If they are done early they are encouraged to add some
landscaping.

Day 10: Test day. Teams bring their models and place them in front of the fan. They then have to
present their model to the three pigs ( stuffed animals sitting in chairs). Then the test is given. As a class
we say “..and he huffed and he puffed and he blew their house down.” Then the fan is set on low for a
count of  20. Student’s then say the phrase again, as I crank up the fan intensity. The structure endures
a count of 20 at this setting. If the structure is still standing, students repeat the phrase and I turn the
wolf up to high. The structure endures a count of 20. If they pass all three stages They have defeated the
Big Bad Wolf and the pigs put a stamp of approval on the house.

Day 11: The final day is cleaning the construction zone. Students destroy their structures and must
properly dispose of their materials or face a fine on their construction company. ( There is no real fine,
just they are the last to receive their prizes). Once cleaned we discuss what we learned. Students review
about the different jobs and how they all work to help in the building process. We talk about things that
were challenging, challenges we conquered in our design process, and what was the best part for you.
Then students receive a small prize ( plastic hard hats, construction badges,etc).

#Choice

Last blog post I wrote about how I have created an hour of play in my classroom. In that post I
refer to menu’s and choice which has opened up the opportunity for students to have more play
time throughout the day.  This post I am going to break down the importance of choice even at
the Kindergarten.

I am currently reading Jane McGonigal’s book Reality is Broken:Why Games Make Us Better
and How They Can Change the World (Penguin,p 21, 2011) at the beginning of the book she
breaks games into four traits, one of them is “voluntary participation”, which is “that everyone who
is playing the game, knowingly and willingly accepts the goal, the rules, and the feedback.”
McGonigal goes on to talk throughout the book that this choice in participation is part of the buy
into to games and ultimately one of the driving factors behind driving focus, motivation, and
internal reward systems.

In my classroom McGonigal’s voluntary participation is called choice. In my classroom, students are
given a lot of control. I guide students to understand topics like rules, social emotional interactions.
technology, engineering, science, mathematics, and language arts. Students are the ones that make the
rules with some guidance from the teacher. I try very hard to not solve problems for students but to ask
them questions about the topic. Giving them the choice of how they are going to solve a problem gives
them ownership of their learning. This also helps to promote critical thinking skills, perseverance, and
responsibility, When students are given a choice research has shown that students are more invested in
the outcome and feel more involved.

Giving students choice in all these areas also means a mind shift for the educator in the room. You
are no longer the leader of the classroom, you are a facilitator, coach, guide to their learning,
cheerleaders and the students are the leaders of their learning.

Now that I have laid out a pretty educational foundation let’s get to the good stuff, the concrete examples
of how I enact choice in my classroom.

1:Menus : Students have Menus or choice boards for things that need to be accomplished throughout
the day. Each week students are given a packet for the week for ELA and Math. Students are given a list
of 4 MUST DO’s and 4 MAY DO’s for each day of the week. The rules that I lay out is what each center
should look like or consist of, for word work they need to complete 2 of the options, for writing there is a
certain task, then we model things like read to self and buddy read at the beginning of the year, then
there is one technology must do a day. Students are given an hour and a half in the morning to get what
they can done, they are allowed to do it in any order and as long as they meet the rules I laid out can take
as much time as they want at each station. Once students have meet the requirements of the centers
they are allowed to choose any of the 4 May do’s to participate in, May do’s are usually fun, unstructured
play activities, creation station, legos, blocks, etc.

#REALTALK: Yes, I have had students that just color in and say they did centers that they did not do,
when called on it they have lied and said well I forgot or yeah. Once I recognized it I incorporated several
talks into our morning meetings.We talked about why it is important to do all our work and all centers, the
importance of telling the truth even about something little, and what to do if we make a mistake. With
choice comes the opportunity for lots of little life lessons, embrace them! These are important skills that
they will need for the rest of their lives and academic careers please take the time to teach these skills!

2: Social Emotional Issues: In Kindergarten one of the greatest lessons students learn is the idea of
school, and social rules. In an effort to help students take ownership of these lessons, I very rarely solve
problems for students. A phrase that is commonly heard in our classroom is, “how can you solve that
problem?” “What is something you can do to accomplish that?” “Is there someone in our classroom that
already knows how to do that?” These questions put the issue back in the students court and let’s them
choose how to solve their problem, building problem solving skills, and learning independence. Also most
of the classroom management courses/ books I have read say that even when students are given choices
in how to solve a problem they are more invested and more likely to make a positive choice in the future
to solve that same problem.

#REALTALK yes, this can backfire and students can use it as a social time or there are times when I
have had to step in because hitting and biting someone is not the time to ask questions but to intervene.
As a teacher and adult I totally believe that you will know how to respond to each behavior.

3:  STEM: one of the major things that drives the STEM fields is questions. So again I let inquiry
drive a lot of these teachable moments as discussed above I ask students a lot of questions about
what they observe, what they think it means, after a lesson so what do you think this means now?
While questions are a huge part of choice so is exploration.  In Christine Pinto and Alice Keeler’s
book Google Apps for Littles they talk about letting students explore within a technology
atmosphere. After showing students some very basics like how to access a file, students are given
time to press buttons, make choices, mistakes, and explore. You will be amazed at how this will
encourage collaboration with no teacher direction. One student will be able to color something,
make something bigger and soon their friend is asking them questions or they are enthusiastically
showing others. This same concept of exploration and choice is a great reminder for Science,
Math, and Engineering. When introducing a new concept I will often give students time to play and
explore with the materials we are going to use, so they can start to fire up those synapses to make
connections to the lesson that is about to be taught, creating more buy in from students when they
are learning.

#REALTALK: Sometimes ground rules need to be set like Popsicle sticks are not light sabers,
swords, or go in our mouths. I recently had to to remind students exploring building materials
(including bamboo skewers) that it is important to be careful of our bodies in space, so that we
don’t poke or hit others on accident.

Choice is a powerful tool that helps me to create a flexible schedule in my classroom and to
empower my little learners. I want to reiterate that like with all things balance is key. Choice is a
powerful tool that will help to internally motivate students and help to create an atmosphere of
ownership. I encourage you to start small letting students have a choice of books in a book box, or
give your students time to explore. I hope this gives you some insight or ideas of how to
incorporate choice into your classroom.

#hourofplayeverday

When some hear the words play they picture toys or kids or both everywhere all over, things half left out,
messes and wacky stories, simply put chaos. What I see is collaboration, negotiating skills, force and
motion lessons, quantitative thinking, taking care of one’s needs, asking others for help, story building,
and so much more. So then the question arises how do we bring this emphatic response to being in the
classroom. While I do not claim to be an expert here are some things I have recently attempted to help
bring an hour of play into my classroom time.

1- Play in the morning: Students have 10-15 minutes to play first thing in the morning, after attendance
and announcements. This allows them time to have social interactions that I was trying to stifle originally
in order to get to content. They get to play and according to a recent podcast I heard by Don Wettrick
where he was talking with Dr Brynn Winegard an expert in the field of business and neuroscience, but
speaking about Brain based leadership and innovation. Paraphrased, “The average attention span of this
generation is approximately 3 sec…” and paraphrased “that research shows students brain are most
ready to work after play..” These two reasons alone just help support my reason to starting the day with
play. Additionally, I have noticed that when it is time to learn they more on task, work collaboratively to
solve their problems, and voice level is better maintained. Now not all of this is directly correlated to play
it also has to do with procedures set in place prior, but previous to incorporating play in the am I had
more issues with their work time then I do presently.

2-Play and choice in their work: Students are given menus of their small group center activities for the
week, we call them menus. These menu’s have 4 must do centers and 4 may do centers. The only rule
is the Must do’s need to all be done before you can move onto the may do’s . Students are then given
1 hour and a half to complete their may do’s in any order they want, as long as they accomplish the task.
Often times May do tasks will be a purposeful game or skill for them to work on to help them master or
work on a skill in the subject area. As I introduced menu’s I kept it easy and work light so students got to
play faster. At this point of the year students are completing several time intensive tasks and still able to
get to their May do’s. Their productivity has increased in the matter of months.

3-Time outside: I really enjoy the sun, and sunny days are perfect for students to learn, so when
introducing a new topic in math (at the end of the day when most K’s just want to go home) I take them
outside with chalk and we learn the concept outside on the sidewalk, or we play games like duck duck
goose to help with counting and subtraction skills. Students can then grasp the concept in a kinesthetic
or tactile approach which is how most littles learn. Our school recently created an outdoor classroom,
that I am super excited to take my class to for our learning adventures.

4-Ketchup Time: This is a time when students that may have not completed all their must do’s can get
that work done and students that are done can have free play this is usually for about 30 minutes at the
end of the day. While I have found quite a few road bumps with this one, I am also trying some skills to
help students learn to ignore distractions and still get to their time. I have recently purchased some sand
timers on Amazon which I tell the students that need to work that once the sand is out they are done for
today. I usually only hand them a 5 minute timer. Then these littles still get to play so they see the
reward for work completion. (Which is not the goal just the happy outcome).

In using play in these ways, I am still able to get content in, attend to student needs, and help them
learn important social and life skills in the process. I will still admit there are some kinks I need to
work out based on individual students needs, but all of my students are benefiting from at least one of
the above ways of play in the classroom. I also do not think I will ever go back to how I used to teach,
my goal is to always innovate and change my teaching to best benefit my students that year.

#GoogleClassroomdifferentiation

This week I participated in the #innovatingplay/#gafe4littles slow flip chat about connections.
In one of the post I mentioned how I differentiate assignments for my students to help meet their needs
at their level and connect with them at their level. This prompted a request for some examples of how I
do this. Therefore a blog post was born.

Google Classroom has a wonderful feature that allows you to assign activities to students.
When I first started using the program the only way to give a specific student a slide deck was to label
assignments with their name or number and then they had to search for it in the stream. If any of you
know the struggle of the stream in Google Classroom with Kindergarten, it is real.That is why I was so
ecstatic when they gave you the option to select a specific student or students.

Google has started up a wonderful Youtube series called EDU in 90. In this series Google for education
designers/developers tell you about an Google EDU product in 90 sec. In this specific video they are
talking about how to differentiate in Google Classroom:

I always start off differentiating listening activities. I use the Edpuzzle extension to help take out ads
from YouTube stories that are on their level. This can take lots of hours searching because if you are
like me you find one and then hear a song that kinda sounds like a Justin Timberlake song you heard
and then you remember he just released a new album AND WE’RE OFF on the rabbit trail and then
you remember oh yeah back to books. LOL!

The next thing I have differentiated are animal research report forms. Every year at the end of the year
my kiddos pick an animal to research and do a report about in anticipation of our Zoo field trip. I like to
make sure that students have research that they can kinda navigate specifically for their animal. So I
will search for information on their animal at their reading level and then send that research specifically
to that kiddo.

Once students start to pick up some basic CVC and a handful of sight words reading. I will use Fluency
Tutor to give students differentiated reading passages. Students listen to the passage as many times as
they need and then record themselves reading the passage. It sends it directly to my drive and I can
listen and mark it as a reading record. Then meet with students to discuss how they think they did.

I will admit I could be better at differentiating but finding the time is hard. I have great intentions to make

differentiated activities for my students for everyday of the week, but…. LIFE #thestruggleisreal. I have
gotten to a few things, but mostly use differentiating for sending links. Here are some of the activities I
have created for differentiation with students.

Name Building: First name with help, first name no help, first and last name.

Math: 100's chart match, 100's chart fill in missing 10, 100's chart fill in 5's, 100s chart fill in