Our first STEM project

I spent some of my Christmas break working on personal professional development-especially since I was literally snowed-in for the second week of the break. I spent some time reading Ron Clark's books, working on Google Classroom training, learning about STEM, and planning for the spring semester.

So, I was excited to come back and put some of my research and planning into practice. Fridays are busy days for my class, but I knew they would be the best days for our STEM projects, also. I told my students that we would do a special activity, but I didn't give them any hints as to what that activity might be.

When the time came, I divided the students into groups of 3 and explained to them that they would be working together to make catapults. We discussed what catapults were, what their materials were, and that their goal was to see how far they could throw a "snowball" with their catapult. Students were allowed to use scissors and tape, but no other materials that hadn't been given to them. I used the materials list from Teacher's Clubhouse Stem Challenge.

The students got to work. Some groups were quicker to try out their ideas than other groups were. Since this was my second graders' first time experiencing a project like this, there were some students who weren't sure how to begin. Those students wanted exact instructions or for someone else to do it for them. I encouraged those students to try out their ideas and see what happened.

The groups had 20 minutes to build their catapults. Some groups did not need the entire time to make their catapults. I encouraged those groups to find ways to make their catapults better during the remaining minutes. I didn't give my groups any assistance on creating their catapults or fixing problems. If they couldn't get the catapult to launch, they figured out how to fix it on their own.

The class sat on the carpet while each group demonstrated their catapults for us. Some catapults launched perfectly every single time. Other catapults took several tries to get the "snowball" to launch at all. However, each group was able to get their catapult to launch at least once. The quality of the catapults was definitely not the same in each group, even though each group had the same materials to work with. I found that some students did not meet my expectations, while others surprised me. Overall, our first STEM experiment was a total success!

I had students reflect on their projects. Students wrote down what worked well, what didn't work, and what they would do differently.

I can't wait to do more STEM projects with my students!