iteea educational standard(s): -...

Lesson #4 STEM : Planning Your Toy Box Design

Lesson Summary: In this activity, students are building background knowledge that they will use in solving their engineering design challenge by testing the materials based on their physical properties and determining which materials will be better for which task. Students will then brainstorm individually before deciding on a plan for their group design. They will build and test their design in the next STEM activity.

Lesson Objectives: Describe objects in terms of their materials and

physical properties Identify the problem and describe how their design solves the problem Describe the steps of an engineering design process

Time Required: 30 minutes

Standards Addressed: National Minnesota

ITEEA Educational Standard(s):

Next Generation Science Standards:

Common Core Mathematics:

Science Standards:2.2.1.1.1 (Physical Science) – Std: 1. Objects can be described in terms of the materials they are made of and their physical properties.Benchmark: Describe objects in terms of color, size, shape, weight, texture, flexibility, strength and the types of materials in the object.

2.1.2.2.1 (NSE) 2. Engineering design is the process of identifying a problem and devising a product or process to solve the problem.

2.1.2.2.2 (NSE) - Describe why some materials are better than others for making a particular object and how materials that are better in some ways may be worse in other ways.

Mathematics Standards:2.3.2.1: Understand the relationship between the size of the unit of measurement and the number of units needed to measure the length of an object.

2.3.2.2: Demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between length and the numbers on a ruler by using a ruler to measure lengths to the nearest centimeter or inch

Materials: Toy Box (1 per group) Set of Toys (1 per group) Sample Materials Bags EDP planning sheet (1 per

student) Masking tape

PictureSTEM: Designing Toy Boxes

Vocabulary: Word Definition

Background:

Materials ListEach group needs: 1 box of similar size for testing (one/group, 10-15 total depending on group size) roll of masking tape Ruler Copies of Design Challenge planning sheet

Assortment of toys/crafts to put into the toy box(1 set per group): Toy Car Legos Golf Ball Rubber, bouncy ball Colored Pencils Paper Stickers Beads Playdough Eraser

Materials Sample Bags (1 set per group): Include small pieces of each of the following Aluminum foil pipe cleaners construction paper tissue paper string foam sheets craft sticks

Before the Activity: Create Materials Sample Bags

o Prep: Place one small sample of each material into a ziploc bag Make copies of the Engineering Design Process (EDP) Planning sheet (1/student)

Introduction: Comments:

PictureSTEM© 2013 University of Minnesota-STEM Education Center


1. To kick off the start of the engineering design challenge, tell students, “We are going to be continuing our work with this unit and over the next two days we are going to be working as engineers. Does anyone know what an engineer does?” (Take student answers).

“Engineers are people who use science, math and creativity to solve problems and they solve these problems by creating different things.”

(Give an example of a problem that you have had and ask students to help you think of a solution). Then ask students about some of the problems that they might have or have had in the past.

2. Tell students, “Those are some good problems, and just like that you are starting to think like engineers. Another thing that engineers do is that sometimes their problems can be really difficult and so they use a process, called the engineering design process, to help them solve their problems.”

3. Introduce students to the Engineering Design Process using the steps sheets that have been taped together and explaining each of the steps as you read aloud the word and the description.

4. Tell students, “We are going to use this Engineering Design Process as we work on our design challenge as engineers over the next two days. Can anyone remember what problem we are trying to solve? (Create a system/organizer to make it easy to find our toys within the toy box ). I have added your ideas to the board/chart and now I want you to listen as I read the design challenge again and I want everyone to think about the problem that we are trying to solve and if we have

An example of a problem - My little cousin really likes to collect rocks at this creek by our house, but the problem is that he only had two hands and so after collecting a few rocks his hands are full and he has to go home.

Remind students that when they were sharing problems and brainstorming solutions that they were doing the ASK and IMAGINE steps.



accurately described it.”

Design Challenge: Parents have been complaining about kids’ messy toys and how hard it is to bring toys with them because to get the toys out, they have to dump out the entire box. A toy company wants to build a new and improved toy box and they have come to you for help. They want your great ideas about what could they do to help keep the toys organized when they are in the box?

Ok, so thinking about the design challenge that we just listened to, did we correctly describe the problem that we are trying to solve or should we add to what we have written on the board? (Add to student answers if necessary). Now that we know our problem, we have completed the first step of the engineering design process and can continue with the next steps of planning, designing, sharing and improving our organized toy boxes. Are you ready to plan, and design some better toy boxes?

Activity:

1. Introduce students to some of the constraints on their designs by telling them, “ Before we can start to plan some new designs, we need to know some of the rules, or constraints, for these toy box designs. The toy company has already decided that they want to use this toy box (hold up the sample) as the outside for their new and improved toy box, so our organizer has to fit with this toy box.

They have also sent a sample of the types of toys that they would like for you to organize, (Hold up the Ziploc bag of toys) which include the following (Pull out and place each of the items into the toy box as you

Comments:



say their name): Toy Car Legos Golf Ball Rubber, bouncy ball Colored Pencils Paper Stickers Beads Playdough Eraser

“I have put all of these items into their current toy box, what do you think will happen to the toys in my toy box when I put the lid on top and walk around with it? (Take student guesses). Let’s see if you are right”(Try it by walking around with exaggerated swinging of the toy box as you walk).

2. After you have finished walking around with the original toy box take the lid off and show students what it looks like.

“Hmm, do you think that it would be easy to find exactly what I need in this toy box? (No). So, as it is now it is not a good design for keeping my toys organized and the toy company would not be happy with this design.”

“So, if this is not a good design, how would we know if we have a good design? (Take some student ideas). We will want to practice with it or test our new toy box to see if it keeps the toys organized. Here is the test that we are going to use to see if it is a good design.”

3. Demonstrate the following test in front of students:

Show students that each of the toys are pictured on the EDP cards and in order to make sure that you can



find any of the toys quickly, one person from your group will pull a card and then the teacher has to be able to grab all of the items for that toy within 5 seconds.

4. Tell students, “Now that we know how it is going to be tested we are almost ready to design, but there is one more thing that we want to consider. Remember in yesterday’s lesson how we learned about physical properties that we could use to describe objects? Well, using those to describe our toys is really helpful when thinking about our objects. Who can remember some of those physical properties? (color, size, shape, strength, weight, flexibility, texture).”

“Remember how we sorted the materials in our bags from yesterday (hold up physical properties bag)? We are going to do the same thing with our toys, but first let’s use some of our new words to describe them. “

Have students sort the toys and then ask groups to talk about how they sorted the toys and what they noticed about the properties of the different groups or toys.

Together with the class, fill out the following toy properties table with your students.

Car

Legos

Ball Bouncy Ball


Kristina Tank, 03/05/14,

Depending on the level of your students – you can have them copy along with you or just do them as a class that students can use as a reference.


Crayons

Colored Pencils

Paper

Stickers

BeadsPlaydough

After filling out the table as a class, go over some of the properties together and talk about what that means for their toy box designs. For example, the balls, and beads are round – what does that mean for when you put those toys into your toy box (they can roll). Or, the beads are really small, so what does that mean? (they can get lost or slide behind other objects or it might be better for the beads to be by themselves).

5. Tell students, “Now that we know about the properties of our toys, let’s look at some of the properties of the materials that we can use. (Pass out the material sample bags). We are going to fill out a similar chart to describe our materials.Aluminum Foil



TissuePaper

ConstructionPaper

Pipe Cleaners

String

Craft Sticks

FoamSheets

After filling out the table go over some of the materials together and talk about what that means for their toy box designs.

Ex: Why might it be nice to have something that is flexible, like the pipe cleaners or the foam or the paper? (it is easy to fold and move). Why might it be not so good to use something like paper? (it can tear or not strong enough). What about something that is strong, like the craft sticks – why could they be good? Why could be bad?

6. Now, that you have gone over the properties of the toys and materials as a class, have students brainstorm (on their own), some different ways they might want to organize the toys in their toy box. After giving them some time to think about it, then pass out their planning worksheet for students to get started on their own.


Kristina Tank, 03/05/14,

Depending on your students, it may be hard for them to visualize the planning, so you might need to have them place the toys on top of the paper and draw lines as they are brainstorm, which in that case they would be completing that part together.


7. Once students have brainstormed some ideas for how they might set it up then have them go back and start on their final plan with their partner. Tell students that tomorrow they will be building and so in order to get the materials that they need from the “Materials Store” they need to label which item they are using on their final plan. (Show them the example plan that is included below).

8. They also need to tell you how much they will need and that can be determined by counting the number of boxes they have covered in their final plan and recording it on the last page of their packet, or the materials sheet. (Again, demonstrate how to do this with the example plan).

9. Float and help students as they work on completing their planning worksheets.

Closure:

10. Once students have completed their plans, then they are ready to starting building in the next lesson.

Comments:



Assessment:

Pre-Activity Assessment

Activity Embedded Assessment

Post-Activity Assessment



1. What is the problem?_______________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________

2. How are we going to solve it?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

3. Circle the materials you want to use and tell why?

Aluminum Foil

TissuePaper

ConstructionPaper

Pipe Cleaners

String

Craft Sticks

FoamSheets



4. How will you use them? Draw an idea in the space below. (Plan #1)



5. Draw a second idea in the space below. (Plan #2)



6. Let’s work together! Come up with a plan for your group.



7. Materials

What materials do you need? How much?

Aluminum foil _____ boxes

Tissue paper _____ boxes

Constructionpaper _____ boxes

Pipe cleaners _____ boxes

String _____ boxes

Craft Sticks _____ boxes

Foam Sheets _____ boxes


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