Today 2B created participated in their first STEM challenge. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths and encourages students to use skills from these different areas in the one project. Today 2B were given the challenge of creating a boat out of foil and seeing how many marbles it could hold before sinking.
In pairs, students had to design and create their boat, trying to think of ways to make their boat stronger. Then 2B tested the boats in a bucket of water to see how strong they were. Talking together, 2B realised that some had made their boats too big for the bucket, some boats had low sides so water got in easily and some boats were too small so they couldn't hold a lot of marbles. 2B also realised the need for skip counting to make counting the marbles quicker. This activity not only encouraged team work and speaking in the English language, but helped students develop their critical thinking skills in a range of subjects. Mao, Aya and Akari's boat could hold 162 before sinking with Ms Aya's boat coming in second with 53 marbles!
In pairs, students had to design and create their boat, trying to think of ways to make their boat stronger. Then 2B tested the boats in a bucket of water to see how strong they were. Talking together, 2B realised that some had made their boats too big for the bucket, some boats had low sides so water got in easily and some boats were too small so they couldn't hold a lot of marbles. 2B also realised the need for skip counting to make counting the marbles quicker. This activity not only encouraged team work and speaking in the English language, but helped students develop their critical thinking skills in a range of subjects. Mao, Aya and Akari's boat could hold 162 before sinking with Ms Aya's boat coming in second with 53 marbles!
