A place to share thoughts, ideas, gadgets, and giggles from my classroom. 💜

STEM:Cup Stacking

This week, I challenged my students to build the tallest tower with forty cups. The cups we used were punch cups. That is all you need! Such an easy, fun, engaging activity. My students loved it!! I set 20 minutes on the Class Dojo timer. I used the random chooser to assign groups. There were 5-6 students in each group. Then I yelled " Go!"
At first, all the groups wanted to make a pyramid with their cups. That was just not going to get them very far. I didn't want to give them guidance, but I needed to give a tip to get their brains working in overtime. 
They were done with the task in less than five minutes with the pyramid way. Then I gave them the idea to turn their cups around and wow! They just took off!!
They went higher and higher! I walked around listening to the groups work. I heard, some say, "Stop being bossy!" " You need to listen to me!" " I don't wanna work with you." and my favorite " Don't breath!"
I don't usually leave my kiddo's faces in the pictures, but just look at the fear, the wishful thinking, and the worry on the kids in the background! It is priceless! 
These two boys were neck in neck with each other. They both have a leadership attitude and had a hard time getting along as a group. 
The winning group had a tower 52 inches tall! I was so proud of my kids for tackling the challenge. 
We did the stacking challenge twice. The first, I picked the groups randomly. The second time, I picked team "leaders" who chose the rest of the group. There was a lot less bickering when I chose the random groups. I think everyone had a good time and learned a little something about working as a team. 
They were trying not to breath on the tower...

1 comment

Translate posts here!