Humpty Dumpty STEM!

It's the fourth week of school and we finally started our Literacy STEM projects! At my school, every Wednesday we have "Genius Hour" which is geared toward higher order thinking, problem solving and critical writing! My goal for the year is to make our Wednesdays "STEM days".

This week we read the story, Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty? which my students loved! If you haven't read the story, you definitely should!

After we read the story, I laid out many objects I have been collecting for a while! (Toilet paper rolls, headbands, rubber bands, Play Doh, electrical tape, popsicle sticks, binder clips, cupcake liners, plastic bottle caps, etc.) The main goal: to build a wall for Humpty Dumpty to not only sit on top of, but to sit on top of and to be secure if he were pushed.

As a group, they had to discuss what items they would use and what would work to hold Humpty Dumpty in place. I gave them about 15 minutes to look at the items and discuss with their groups, and then about another 15 minutes for them to write about how they would complete their project in their STEM journals. (What items they were going to pick, their idea for how they would structure the wall, and their reason as to why they thought it would work.) This first page of the journal is completed BEFORE they start building their wall.

Once the journal page is done, I let each group come pick up their supplies and began building their walls! Some of them couldn't finish in the allotted time I gave them, but others were MAGNIFICENT! With it being the fourth week of school, I was not expecting some of the walls that were given to me! (Truth be told ha!)

[Let me preface that the night before I was up hard boiling 5 eggs and hot gluing eyes on them to be test subjects! Ha! But it was SO worth it!]

Once, the walls were done I gave each group their Humpty Dumpty. I let them sit their egg on their wall where they wanted him to be *test pushed* off of it. Three of the Five groups were successful in their test push!

After we tried out the H.D. walls, they opened their STEM journals back up and turned to the next page where they had to analyze their walls. What worked? What could be improved? Etc. Then they had to draw a picture of the project.

With it being out first "Literacy STEM" project it took longer than the allotted hour for STEM, but I'm truly excited for more STEM projects in the future!

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Love Always,

Sara