The One with Bridges and Teaching Gods

This entire blog was written with Shake It Off on repeat so I kindly recorded a bit for you so our brains could both be in the same place. And yes, on repeat for a record player means moving the needle every 3 minutes.  It times nicely with my attention span. (I won’t tell you how long a blog can take from start to finish) 

This blog was meant to come out last Wednesday but for once my procrastination has a bright side! Wednesday was our zoo trip and we returned with 45 minutes of instruction. What’s a girl to do when 24 eight year olds are still in zoo mode? Pull out the STEM labs!

Next year I plan to implement #STEMFriday and as usual my excitement and brain went faster than my calendar and #STEMWednesday was created.

A HUGE shout out to my new favorite TpTer – Teachers areTerrific – she has amazing STEM products and I went a little overboard once I found her. 

Back to Wednesday – for our first STEM activity we I decided to have the kiddos build bridges out of index cards. My reason was very thought out and methodical…index cards were easier to find than spaghetti and marshmallows in my supply closet. In this STEM activity we only needed scissors, 25 index cards, and weighted pieces. NO CARDBOARD, NO GLUE GUNS, NO SPRAY PAINT, AND NO GLITTER. Ask me how I feel about that.

Here comes reason 1 of 3490843 why I love Teachers are Terrific – she has everything laid out to a T! Following her expert advice we launched the activity using just a few index cards to understand how to bending the index cards can give more support and weight than a plan index card. 

I think in Teachers are Terrific’s neat and organized classroom would have taken about 5 minutes? In Room 21 after a day at the zoo in May that was our left over time for the day. It worked nicely though because everyone was ready to build the next day and ideas were already developing. 

Day 2

The “today’s behavior will determine our ability to do STEM activities for the rest of the year” spiel had been given and we were ready to build bridges! I gave students about 10 minutes to start and explore in their own groups. After that we shared a few things we learned and tips and went back to work for another 15 minutes. The creativity, innovations, and competitiveness was intense! Our strongest bridge held 184 grams. In the future I would probably give them even less cards because they probably could have added more weight but we ran out! 

The second half of #STEMThursday is where the real magic happened! (I’m more determined to make this hashtag a thing than Gretchen Wieners and the word “fetch”) We had a little bit of time to go into the extend part of the product! To be honest, I first did this to tie it all together and because we had an extra 20 minutes – I’m so glad we did!! 

There were many different extend activities but I chose to have my kids research. They LOVE getting on “the google” and learning all they can about a specific thing, whether it’s bees, electric cars, or today – bridges.

I had each student raise their hand (eyes closed of course) for three different research projects. They were then broken up into groups of 2-4 to begin their research. This is where I re-thank my lucky stars for all the technology I have in my classroom! 

Groups researched:

• The World’s Greatest: Tallest, Widest, and Most Expensive

• Types of Bridges: Covered, Platform, and Suspension

• Specific Bridges: Brooklyn Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge, and the Navajo Bridge

Their desire to learn everything they can is what I love most about this group! The information they gathered was so impressive! Tons and tons of facts and stories were in their notes.

Day 3 

On Friday we had Junior Achievement all day except the last 40 minutes – again 40 minutes to go on a Friday in May? STEM is a lifesaver. We stayed motivated and learning and you could only 78% tell we were nearing the weekend. 

Students continued their research and started to think about how they wanted to present their research to the rest of the class. Some even asked for more resources! (YAY!) So I picked up about 10 children’s books on bridges. 

Unfortunately some of us thought every research project ended in a replica out of cardboard. “But isn’t the Golden Gate Bridge important enough to be a replica?” (I didn’t know a hunk of metal could guilt trip me) We’ll see how nice I am throughout the week if I let them come in before school to work on it. Other groups want to create a PowerPoint and include videos about their bridges. 

And to think, this wasn’t even the original plan?? I love when the Teaching Gods have my back yet again. 

PS. Tomorrow is our Dr. Seuss themed Field Day! Can you guess what book my class picked?!