Friday, 20 May 2016

Help the pirates get across the chasm of despair! Bridge Building STEM challenge



The pirate have found the treasure...but look out! monsters are chasing them! The only way to safety is to cross the chasm of despair! The chasm of despair is a dark dangerous place and if you fall in it spells certain doom!
Can you help the pirates get away from the monsters and get across the chasm of despair?

We had a really fun time this week with our Pirate Bridge Building STEM challenge. The task started off with a musical animation stimulus. The Pirate Bridge Building STEM song gave the children all the background information they needed to complete the challenge and it was a jolly good sing a along too!

There's nothing like a sing a long and a dance to get the brain stimulated to be creative and solve problems!

The pirates followed the treasure map and found the treasure but monsters chased them to the edge of the chasm of despair!




The only way across the chasm of despair is to build a bridge and cross it!
The children researched different types of bridges and designed a bridge that they thought would be appropriate to carry and support the weight of the pirates and their treasure across the chasm.
  
The children used the Google draw app to design their bridges.
Then they choose the materials they wanted to use to build their bridges.
We had a variety of designs such as suspension bridges, arch bridges, draw bridges (so they could be pulled up and the monsters not follow the pirates across) rope bridges and beam bridges.


They children then choose the materials they wanted to use to build their bridges and began construction.
Here is the chasm of despair if you fall in it's certain doom!





The children constructed some wonderful bridges. It was great to see and hear them collaborate so well and solve a variety of problems through trial and error. It was wonderful hands on multi sensory learning incorporating technology, music, movement, collaboration, problem solving and  construction.  Yes, the pirates got across the chasm of despair but the monsters are not happy! Look out for part 2! The monster are not going to give up that easily!  

So are you ready and willing to take the Pirate Bridge Building STEM Challenge? If so then let me know I would love to see what your class comes up with.
The clip art I used in the song video is by Hidesy's HIDESY'S CLIPART TPT store
For more great educational tunes Subscribe to my YouTube channel Rocking Dan Teaching Man YouTube 
Until next time,

rock on.
Rocking Dan Teaching Man