Step Right Up to the Sinclair Cardboard Arcade!

Games are serious business in the STEM Lab. For the second rotation of the year, 4th and 5th grade students are extending the engineering skills they learned in our first unit by constructing a cardboard version of an arcade game. The inspiration for this came from the short film "Caine's Arcade" about a boy in Los Angeles who turned his father's used auto parts store into an arcade filled with games he built with scrap cardboard.

Students began by creating a design journal that will be used for the remainder of the year, as this and other upcoming projects will require extensive planning and notes. Furthermore, the journal will allow them to reflect on the work they have done over the course of the year. Next students discussed in groups the characteristics common to all games and these were recorded on an anchor chart. They noted that games should be fun, games require strategy and skill, they have moving parts, and that they should not be too hard or too easy.

At this point, students watched the "Caine's Arcade" movie and were introduced to the particulars of their design challenge. I showed them examples of real arcade games like one would see at Dave & Buster's as well as some homemade versions like those in the movie. I also shared with them some "half-baked" prototype games of my own. Mine were deliberately unfinished (half-baked) in order to facilitate a discussion about improving a first draft of a project.

With the guidelines and rubric in hand, student teams got to work planning their games. Diagrams were drawn, materials lists were created, rules were drafted. As construction began, I was most impressed to see how students persevered through challenges by working together and helping each other out. Not only did the teams work well, but students were eager to help other teams with construction problems and ideas for improvement. I was also happy to see students being more thoughtful about their use of materials so that very little waste was generated.

As Sinclair is a STEM magnet school with a communications focus, students finished up their projects by inviting another class to play their games. The 5th grade hosted Ms. Tritico's 2nd grade, and Ms. Flores' 4th grade hosted Ms. Salzman's 1st graders. The visitors were invited to leave feedback about the games they played. Several teams went over the top with their games giving out tickets and prizes which I thought was a nice touch.

Another thing going on in the lab this rotation is getting the 3rd - 5th grade students started working in Scratch. The 4th and 5th graders used Scratch last year to program games and create animations that illustrate science concepts. However, this year, the wonderful people at MIT (where Scratch was born) have created teacher and student accounts that facilitate all of us working together on projects. Below are a couple of games made by a 5th grader and a 4th grader, respectively. (Both use the left and right arrow keys to move the catcher. Press the green flag to start.)




Check back in a few weeks another STEM lab update. It will be about robots! Also, I will put up a slideshow of the amazing games created by the classes who have not been to the lab yet.