Each fall in Science-Design class, we focus on community by dedicating the first few weeks of the school year to activities that are made cooperatively, used in groups, and even have metaphorical connections to the concept of togetherness.
Our first and second graders are making courses for ping-pong balls. In first grade, we call them Ping-Pong Ball Tracks, and in second grade they’re Ping-Pong Ball Mazes, since dead ends and other complications are introduced. In small groups, students start with a design on paper. This drawn design represents shared ideas and, therefore, much discussion, erasing, and impasse strategies like Ro Sham Bo or compromise.
Once they get their shallow cardboard box, they begin making and placing cardboard walls with masking tape, testing for path width, and making sure their project will be “interesting” for the end user whose job is to navigate the course by tilting the box. Eventually, these projects will be used by groups according to different sets of specific rules: Four people, one hand each on each of the four corners; Behind the back; Eyes closed; Non-dominant hands; Silent, except for one direction-giver, etc.
Each third-grade class, meanwhile, is making a Community Chain. After a class discussion about the concept of metaphor and what a many-linked chain can be seen to represent, each student receives a flat CORI beam (a carefully engineered corrugated cardboard sheet that eventually folds into a four-sided, foot-long beam) and draws and colors motifs that speak about various aspects of who they are as individuals. On one side, they illustrate their name; on the next, an animal that they relate to; on the third, a special place; and, finally, an activity that holds meaning.
In the next phase, third graders gain practice following detailed instructions, measuring accurately, cutting safely, and making a clean, strong glue joint. Once decorated, the flat sheets are folded into the square beam shape and cut to specific lengths with a special miter box and saw to give them 45-degree angles. Eventually, these are attached into open “C” shapes and, finally, joined into one class chain to be displayed all year in their homeroom, reminding them of the community they are each an important part of.
Fourth and fifth graders are making Marble Actuators. The metaphor, here, is that every action we take, every decision we make, puts something in motion that affects at least one other person. Maybe the effect is small, maybe large. Perhaps it’s positive, perhaps not. We talked about the trend of “Paying it Forward”, which many students were already familiar with; some shared stories they’d heard of or experienced along those lines.
The basic design of the Marble Actuator is a tilted chute that will allow a marble, once released by a trip mechanism, to roll down and actuate the trip mechanism of the next Marble Actuator, and so on. Getting it to this stage required students to follow many detailed instructions. But as with many of our favorite projects, once this basic structure was made, it required many, many tests and redesigns to get to the reliability goal of seven successes out of ten tries. To bring the metaphorical power of the project home, students will write a narrative depicting a scene in which the actions of one clearly affect another. These writing pieces will be affixed to the base of the Marble Actuator.
Sixth graders are focusing on leadership this year, and we came up with the stairway/ladder as a potent symbol of growing into an effective role model. Students followed instructions to design a stairway, from scratch, on the computer. Since there are 9 sixth graders this year, there were 9 steps (“treads”) on each staircase. Once the painstaking renderings were complete, they outputted them directly to the laser cutter and watched as their designs were cut out of thin plywood. Clamping the tiny sides together around a spacer block, each tread was affixed using wood glue and a toothpick. Next, a base will be made by first measuring aspects of their stairway (each student’s is a little different) with a digital caliper, and then laser cutting a shape that includes perfectly sized slots to accept their stairway.
The students will come up with a motto, original quote, or saying that incorporates the idea of a stairway and the idea of growth or leadership as depicted on these treads.
Brian Belsha & Chip Edwards, Science-Design Teachers