This year I am trying something new to encourage our students to think like an engineer, work together in small groups and to foster a growth mindset. I have been offering after-school STEM challenges. Fifth graders were offered a spaghetti-marshmallow challenge, 4th graders a candy corn challenge, and third graders an Oreo challenge. For each of these challenges, students were given a limited number of supplies and time, and their challenge was to build the tallest freestanding structure. Students were encouraged to collaborate, use the engineering design process, and to constantly make improvements to their structures, even when it looked like the structure would not win, or even stand alone. Throughout the challenges, the emphasis was on persistence and accepting that it is “okay to fail.” Luckily, all of the challenges involved sweet edible items which made the agony of defeat taste less bitter.
Project Lead the Way follows the APB method. For a better understanding how the STEM challenges gets our students ready for PLTW, please read the following quote from the PLTW website:
“APB: The Building Blocks of PLTW’s Curriculum
Our activity-, project-, and problem-based (APB) instructional design centers on hands-on, real-world activities, projects, and problems that help students understand how the knowledge and skills they develop in the classroom may be applied in everyday life. The APB approach scaffolds student learning through structured activities and projects that empower students to become independent in the classroom and help them build skill sets to apply to an open-ended design problem. This approach provides students with unique opportunities to work collaboratively, identify problems, apply what they know, persevere through challenges, find unique solutions, and lead their own learning.”-PLTW.org
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