STEM Lab 23_24 Round 2

I have been so busy being amazed by the incredible work the students are doing this round, I just realized that I had yet to write the blog post about it!

Kindergarten & First Grade

This round is one of my personal favorites, Math Stories. In this unit, each day starts with a picture book that centers on some kind of math concept. Some of the books tell stories, while others are more like counting books or math puzzles. Each grade level's books feature a variety of math topics including number sense, geometry, measurement, multiplication, and general problem solving. After the day's reading, students complete a hands-on activity related to the math concept covered in the book. Sometimes the activity is a bit like an art project, other times it is practice employing a particular tools or strategy. What I love about this unit is the chance to pair two subjects (math and literature) that students too often think of as related. 

Second Grade

This past summer I was fortunate to be able to travel with Lindblad Expeditions and National Geographic as a Grosvenor Teacher Fellow to the high arctic archipelago of Svalbard. (You can read more about the particulars of that experience here and here.) This is the first project inspired and informed by my fellowship experience. I have done other iterations of this project before, but this time it was fully centered on the arctic. We started with a photo highlights tour of my time in the arctic. Then students chose one of the arctic animals from a list and researched it using the National Geographic Kids website. Part of the note taking process included drawing the animal and its habitat. Those drawings served as practice for the elements that were included in a Scratch Jr project about the selected animal. Students drew their animal's habitat and several versions of the animal. These drawings were photographed into a Scratch Jr project and coded to share information that students gathered from their research. This is one of the first projects students in the STEM lab complete that combines physical and digital elements and the results were amazing.

Third Grade

A perennial favorite in the lab is cardboard arcade, and this round saw 3rd grade get their chance with this project. Many of the current 3rd graders remember getting to visit the lab in 1st or 2nd grade to play cardboard arcade games and there were cheers from several students in each class when I announced the project for the week. We start by watching the short film Caine's Arcade for inspiration and discussion. Then students begin brainstorming and planning their games in their STEM lab journals. The middle of the week is spent building, testing, and making necessary adjustments to the design. At the end of the week finished products are presented to a visiting group of students from 1st grade along with administrators. These presentations are an important part of the design process in the lab. Sharing their work with an authentic audience gives the students a chance to practice talking about what they have created and what they have learned from the building process. The presentations also serve to inspire the younger students when they see the kinds of projects they will get to do as they progress through the STEM lab curriculum.

Fourth Grade

For the 4th graders, this round was the first half of a 2 part project. The end result will be an interactive biography programmed in Scratch and controlled with a physical display. Part 1 involves researching the life and important contributions of a well known artist or scientist. They had their choice of 11 different people as well as the choice of whether to work alone or with a partner. Once they had completed their research, students moved on to the Scratch project. The programs are run with key press events which will allow them to be controlled in part 2 with the Makey Makey and the physical display. Students had to find 3 relevant images and at least one map to include with their program. We had some great discussions about using images to illustrate the information being shared in the program. In round 2 the students will share their completed projects with a visiting class and administrators. 

The Scratch biographies can be found in this studio. (Some are still works in progress.)

Fifth Grade

Like 4th grade, the 5th graders started work on a two part project. This one is called Tiny Museum. The students conduct research on a chosen topic and use Scratch to create a virtual museum room with artifacts and images that share what they have learned. The project includes a narrator that serves as a digital tour guide to the exhibit they have put together. The topic choices I gave them were inspired by my aforementioned National Geographic fellowship. I wanted them to focus not just on the basic information about the topic, but also the impacts human activities are having on the arctic ecosystem. The second part of their project will have them building a physical model of their museum room and wiring a switch to the door that triggers the tour guide to start start speaking upon the door opening. 

Here is the studio of virtual museum rooms. (The projects at the top of the studio are very much works in progress because our 5th graders went to camp the last week of the round, so they only had 2 days to work on their programs.)

Let the Games Begin!

The cardboard arcade has become a yearly fixture in the STEM lab calendar for 3rd grade. I place this in the third grading cycle because it usually has an extra week and few interruptions to the schedule.

We start with a brief overview of what exactly is an arcade. I always include both definitions (covered passageway lined with shops AND place to play games for a fee), because I see myself as a teacher of all subjects. Then we watch and discuss the Nirvan Mullick film Caine's Arcade which is the original inspiration for the whole cardboard arcade phenomenon. The movie documents the arcade built by a 10 year old boy who was spending the summer hanging around in his father's auto parts store.

Next students get together in teams, or elect to work independently, and brainstorm ideas. I place as few limitations on them as I am able. The games must be table top size and must be playable by first and second graders. I encourage the students be be as creative and not just make a replica of an arcade game they saw at Dave and Buster's. Once an idea is selected, students begin planning in their journals. These plan include a list of materials, steps for completion, and direction for how to play the game. I insist on a detailed plan because I find that it cuts down on the amount of materials that are wasted. During the planning phase I meet with each group to offer feedback on their design. Depending on what they are trying to make, I ask questions to get them thinking about the details that will need to be included. That may be "how will you build the ball return?", "how will you stop the ball from flying across the room?", or "how will player know they have won?".

The construction and testing phase lasts several days. While I do help with some of the tougher cutting tasks, I make the students do as much of the hard work as possible. Last year I banned the use of tape in construction because it is wasteful and fails to hold the game together anyway. I spend a lot of the building class periods teaching students to use white glue and structural elements like L-braces and flanges to attach pieces of cardboard to one another. There is much gnashing of teeth in the beginning when I refuse to produce a roll of tape for them to mummify their project with. However, once a few students get the hang of the glue techniques, they are eager to share their skills with others.

The final phase of the project is always the presentation. I invite a class from a lower grade to come and play the games. I never know who will be available from which grade level, so I prepare the 3rd graders for the fact that they may end up entertaining anyone from Kindergarten through 2nd grade. They are always so excited to show off what they have made and the only disappointment ever voiced is that I did not invite their former teacher or the class with their sibling to participate.

There have been some really great projects so far in this unit including a 3 story escape room game, a pinball machine, and a nicely done soccer/hockey mash-up game.

It's Cardboard Arcade Season in the STEM Lab

One of my favorite STEM Lab projects, and one of the most over all successful, is the cardboard arcade. It is one of the few units that I have run every year since founding the lab and I have yet to get tired of it. That's because after hundreds of cardboard arcade games passing under my gaze, I am continually surprised by what the students come up with. I have settled on doing this project with 3rd grade for no better reason than it helps students learn the construction techniques that I want them to employ going forward. It demonstrates in a very real way that masking tape is not the best material to hold to large pieces of cardboard together with when people are going to be throwing balls at it for an hour.

For anyone who is not familiar with this unit, it is one of many offshoots from the original Caine's Arcade seen in the movie at the link. In short, a 9 year old boy in Los Angeles named Caine spent the summer at his father's auto parts store and entertained himself by making replica arcade games with the left over boxes around the shop. Filmmaker Nirvan Mulick discovered Caine's Arcade when he stopped in to by a door handle for his car and made a movie about it. Since the film debuted the cardboard arcade has become a staple of the maker movement in schools. 

One of the best parts of this unit is inviting other classes, usually first grade or kindergarten to the lab to try out the games. I have found that when students know they will have an audience from beyond their class and me, they become more deeply engaged and personally invested in their work. They are more apt to take creative chances that result in project far more wonderful than anything I could assign.

Use The Forces!

This rotation of STEM Lab finds the second graders exploring forces and motion by building mazes and marble runs. This is one of those experimental units that I implement from time to time. As a result, each group's experiences and projects were a little different as I tweaked and adjusted based on how well various activities went in previous interactions.

The unit began with students recording some simple observations in their journals how a marble rolls around in a paper box lid with some straws taped to it. I gave them some starter questions, 'how does the marble move when the box is flat? When you tilt the box?' and so on. We discussed their observations and then did some research into force and motion with Brain Pop Jr. Students took notes in their journals about words like motion, position, and force. We discussed how these terms related to their observations.

The first build of the unit was a marble maze using Lego bricks. A Lego plate is, of course, covered with bumps which effects how the marble rolls. This gave us the opportunity to talk about friction and how a rough surface is not as good for rolling objects. What I have ended up loving most about this part of the unit is how creative the students were with their mazes. I saw mazes not just with dead ends, but traps that it was impossible to escape. There were tunnels and bridges. Some mazes had checkpoints that had to be reached in a certain order. Several had the kind of elaborate back stories that second graders specialize in telling. Sure, they learned about the pull of gravity and how the walls push back on the marble to stop it or change its direction, but the creative expression was the biggest win.

The second build brought us back to cardboard box lids and straws as we shifted to making marble runs instead of mazes. The first time through this part I learned the distinction between a "maze" and a "run" was not clear to a number of students. This became evident as the first batch of attempts had dead ends that prevented the marble from reaching the bottom of the box. A bit of explanation and the added constraint that their runs could not have straws that the marble does not touch, and the results improved dramatically. Students were challenged to make runs that used a certain number of straws and that took certain amounts of time to complete the course. I have been really impressed by how the students problem solved for the different design requirements.

There are definitely some things I would adjust about this unit, like additional building materials, surfaces, and marble sizes in order to more deeply examine the effects they have on the outcomes observed. Overall though I am fairly pleased with how this went and I look forwards to its next iteration.

Games 5th Graders Play

Last week was Teacher Appreciation Week. Along with with the delicious food, thoughtful cards, and other gifts, I received a number of notes from 5th graders thanking me for their time in the lab and in various after school activities. One expressed gratitude for teaching "programming and how make cool things", but also stated it was time "to move on to bigger and better things". Yes it is, and I fully expect to see great things from this group of 5th graders.


Before moving on though, the 5th graders got one last chance to the test case for a unit. (I usually experiment with new ideas and units using the 5th graders because they will be gone the next year, and they can mostly be counted on to give good feedback.) So for their final rotation in the lab 5th grade has been engaged in video game design with Scratch.


We started by making some familiar games and adding new elements like timers, bonuses, lives, and power ups. They experimented with different ways of controlling sprites to find the best one for their designs. Game elements that they take for granted like scores and backgrounds resetting when a new game is started had to be coordinated. Several wanted to make 2 player games which provided a host of challenges to overcome.


The second part of the unit required them to make a game that teaches or provides practice for a skill. I deliberately left this requirement open so that students could follow their interests. For the most part it worked out, but I did get an unnatural number of math fact practice games, probably because it is something they have done before. Still, many branched out making American history quizzes, a piano playing memory game, German language trainers, and one curiosity that purports to teach good tooth brushing habits. A few projects are embedded into the post, but the studio can be found here. There is one more group of 5th graders who have not completed the unit, so there will be more games in the next couple of weeks.