Hi All,
Today grades k, 1 and 4 tested their engineering challenge designs! To refresh your memory, students were challenged to create a contraption for Humpty Dumpty. Their task was to make a contraption that would keep Humpty safe so that he would not break when/if he falls off the wall (like he does in the nursery rhyme).
Students have been building their contraptions in mixed-age groups for the past few weeks. They have continued to improve their designs and make adjustments. Today we finally took students’ designs outside to test them out with real eggs. We dropped “Humpty Dumpty” (a raw egg) from the top of the structure on the playground in each of the safety designs. And 5 out of 6 of the students’ designs were successes. In other words, an egg only cracked in 1 of the 6 tests. Hamorah Nitzan and I were so impressed!
After testing, we debriefed with students about the experience. We talked about how students would improve their designs further if given more time. We also talked about how the raw eggs would have fared on various other surfaces (like a tile floor, for instance).
This project was a real hit. Students loved it. They can’t wait for next week’s challenge #3.