Science 6, Last Day at Brigham

I taught my last lesson at Brigham last Tuesday. I taught this lesson with three other teachers. We taught it to a group of four kindergarteners, so there was one teacher per student. We taught these students an engineering lesson. Our goal was for the students to grasp the concept that when they are building tall buildings, they need to have a wide, sturdy base in order for the tower to stand tall.

The standard this lesson was focused around was NGSS Standard K-2-ETS 1-2. Develop a simple, sketch, drawing, or physical model to illustrate how the shape of an object helps it function as needed to solve a given problem. To meet this standard, we had the students build towers using straws and pipe cleaners. We started off by showing the students pictures of large towers and asking them what the towers had in common. It took some prompting from us teachers, but eventually the students recognized that all the towers had a wider bottom than top. Then the students were able to make their own towers. We gave each student 15 pipe cleaners and 10 straws. Some of the pipe cleaners were cut in half so they could be used as supports. Then each teacher paired with a student since there were equal amounts of teachers and students.

While the students were building, they often forgot that the goal was to make sure that the tower stood on its own. For example, I was holding up my student’s tower for her as she was building it, but when I let go, it fell down. Then we worked together to strategize how to make it stand up on its own. We looked at the pictures again to see what those towers had that our tower was missing. Eventually the student I was working with recognized that she needed to give her tower a stronger base. She added supports to the base to help the tower stand. One boy did not understand the idea of the supports. It appeared that he was trying to make his tower as long as he could, but it did not stand at all. This could be due to the fact that he is an ELL student, so he might not have completely understood what the word tall meant verses the word long. When we noticed him making a long tower, one of the teachers should have explained the word tall again to him.

We made the tower building activity into a competition for the students.  At the end, they were all excited to compare each other’s towers. The girl who I was working with won the competition because her tower had the best base. I did not move much towards my original goal during this lesson, but I was able to ask some students about what language they spoke at home. I asked a girl and a boy what language they spoke at home. Both said they spoke Spanish with their parents. This made me happy that they are continuing to learn English while still practicing their native language at home and in school.  Overall, working with these students at Brigham has been a great experience for me. I wish I could have moved closer towards meeting my goals, but I definitely have made some progress. I look forward to having more experience with English language learners in the future. 

EXCEEDS: I included the NGSS standard that we used in our lesson. I also included a picture of a tower that is similar to one that the students in my group created.