Week 2: K'nex Challenge

The highlight of STEM class this week was the team building k'nex challenge all our students participated in. We randomly grouped our students and asked them to replicate a model that we built out of k'nex. There was one catch though.... in their groups of 3 or 4, only one of the members could look at the model. And that one member could NOT speak to the group member who was building the replica model. One group member was assigned the role of messenger and they were the only person who could speak to both the builder and the viewer.

The point of this challenge was to get the students working together and communicating. We had our students first discuss as a group the best strategy to accomplish the task before they began. When the challenge began, we saw all of the groups using different methods to accomplish the same goal. We used this period-long design challenge to talk about group communication and what it means to work together. After finishing the challenge, the STEM classes discussed what they learned from this challenge, and if they needed to do this again, how they would do it differently.

Almost all the groups in all the classes successfully built a replica model even if they were off to a rough start. Our students also demonstrated proper STEM lab procedures when completing the design challenge.

So far our year is off to a great start! We are excited to jump into our first project next week!

Stay tuned!!

Miss Ricciardi and Miss Capobianco