Engineers Week visit 🚀

What is eWeek? ^source

Engineers Week--the only event of its kind--is a time to:

• Celebrate how engineers make a difference in our world
• Increase public dialogue about the need for engineers
• Bring engineering to life for kids, educators, and parents
• More than a week-long event, Engineers Week is a year-round commitment to making a difference.

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I have been a district coordinator for 8 years and with the help of 4 super dedicated volunteers and my yearly co-op we visit 4 school and all grades (K-12) each year. We typically split into 2 teams so that we can cover a whole school in one day. Our typical classroom visit is about 40 minutes and starts with us talking about engineering and the jobs that we each do. After the brief talk, we get the student hands on involvement with a engineering challenge.

Most districts just visit junior and senior high students, but we even go to the youngest students classes. Although they don't necessarily understand engineering, they do get the message of the importance of math and science. But most importantly, by starting young, it sticks with them as well. I am amazed every year when we return, the students that recant the previous years projects.

Last Friday my team visited around 200 students at an elementary school which had grades K - 3 (ages 5-8). For the very young kids (K&1), we use the same project by grade each year. For the older grades, we will do a simplified version used for the older classes. Typically the older classes will work with budgets for materials whereas the younger kids will not.

Age 5

For the Kindergarteners, we do what is called loop planes. We give each team:
1 - drinking straw
2 - 1" wide paper strips of two different lengths
1 - roll of tape

Yes we emphasize the importance of teams. For K&1 we use small teams of two since teamwork is something that really young kids struggle with and larger teams will usually lead to some disagreement and ultimately crying. We are there to have fun!

As you can imagine, the immediate solution for most teams is to tape the paper strips in standard plane formation onto the straw. When we go to test, they all fall to the floor with no glide as the wings have no strength and just flop. So we discuss changes and they go back and try to improve their designs.
Here is one class's designs.

You can see they attempted to stiffen the wings, but most still do not glide. So then we will show them the hoop design and explain thinking outside the box may be required for the best solutions. The are all give a new set of supplies and a chance to build the hoop design.

Age 6

First graders are given a different challenge that focuses on building something with minimal supplies. They are given the challenge of building the tallest free standing (can't be taped to the table) tower with just:

1 - sheet 8.5" x 11" paper
1 - roll of tape

The learning experience with this challenge is to have a plan before you start building because you can not get replacement supplies. Every year we get at least one team that immediately cuts their piece of paper into tiny building blocks. A good portion of the time, I can just take a sheet of paper and crease it in the middle so that it can stand and it will be taller than most.

Here are the towers from one class. As you can see some of the designs would not stand on their own.

Ones again we discuss what difficulties they had and perhaps import things they failed to consider and then give then new supplies to try again.

Here is a tower I built to demonstrate to them which was over 3 feet high.

Age 7/8

Second and third graders got to do the scaled down version of the project used by the older grades. This year it was based around the winter olympics and more specifically the ski jump. We provide a PVC 'ramp' that a marble is sent down and the teams needed to design and build a jump that will launch the marble the furthest through the air. For these grades we use teams of 4 to further challenge the teamwork aspect. Unfortunately as the day went on, I got more involved and took less pictures. So I only have a picture of the PVC 'ramp' and none of the jumps.

The Reward

It continues to amaze me how tired I am at the end of the day. Gives me a real appreciation of what are teachers do. It is also refreshing to see the students so excited about science. But what I really want to share is the great thank you book I got from one of the 1st grade classes. The book is made of pages that each of the students drawings.

All 18 pages were wonderful but I want to share this one with you. We were quite impressed with the details. If you look at his picture of the towers, he remembered who's each tower was and the relative height compared to the others. We never stood them all together, just kept the highest as the mark to beat for others to try and achieve. It was kept as more of a challenge and not a competition. No winner was declared, each student got a prize of a color changing pencil and we discussed the engineering involved with color changing paint. Off to another school tomorrow :-)

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Read more about my volunteering and how I'm hoping to expand my involvement by being a witness on the new Whaleshares.