Reverse Engineering Toys, Second Grade #STEM

The meeting began like many other meetings with my teacher teams. I asked “what are you working on now?” The teacher shared that in science they were starting a project focused on balance in motion. At the end of the unit they are planning on having the children design their own toys.

I suggested we have the students analyze some existing toys, so they could decide what was important to them in a toy.

Today we study: Toys!

Lesson prep involved going to the dollar store and finding as many cheap and simple toys as I could. I came back with some miniature skateboards, some toy cars, and some knock off slinkys.  

Before the teachers brought the students over to the makerspace, they asked the students to think about their favorite choice. All of the toys the students listed were electronic iPads, gaming systems, computers.

When the students arrived, and they said down at the table they immediately all claimed a toy. I hadn't anticipated this, I had put enough toys out so they all could be working with one, but I hadn't guessed that as soon as they sat down they would each claim one. What I then had to students do was navigate to the class blog. On the blog I had embedded a Google form which asked them some simple questions about the toys.

1. How much fun is the toy?
2. Where does the phone come from?
3. How do you play with the toy.

The students initial responses were fine for the first two questions because they were just a scale question on the multiple-choice question, but the free response question was under responded to. The students were writing two or three words. So I made the requirement that they use complete sentences, and I added a word count. In hindsight, I should have found some other way to promote detailed response.  Many students struggled to come up with 20 words describing  how to play with a toy car or how they play with a toy skateboard or how to play with a slinky. I was surprised because I encouraged them to talk with each other, to get ideas.

I found that the ones who had difficulty writing also had difficulty talking to their table mates.The task quickly turned into a writing class. We put a word wall up on the board, talked about where ideas come from, and even gave some of the students starter sentences. When a student became stuck I often suggested, “write a sentence using the word pretend.”

Our results were for the large part good and useful.  The data we collected was instantly viewable using the “view summary of responses” tool inside the Google form.

When we begin working on our toy design we will return to this data.

We may even get a chance to extend this lesson to full “reverse engineering, and take toys apart and study their components. The current plan is to have students create toys out of recycled materials. The big question is, will we have a 3-D printer in time to have students print their toys?

This #STEM lesson, spent a great deal of time on writing and even keyboarding. So much learning is naturally cross curricular in elementary. What cross content connections are you making in your lessons, what are the challenges you face?