In Science and Technology, our Years 1 and 2 students have been investigating the physics of movement. While we focused on the early years, these activities are easily adaptable for older primary students.
Learning Intention: We are learning about forces (pushes and pulls) and how they make things move, so that we can understand how forces are used in everyday products.
The Learning Journey:
- Exploration and Vocabulary: We began by exploring how different objects move, building a shared vocabulary and encouraging collaborative talk.
- The Scavenger Hunt: No unit is complete without a scavenger hunt! Students moved around the school grounds and the classroom to discover and categorise a variety of forces
- Literacy Integration: Following Lyn Sharratt’s philosophy that every teacher is a literacy teacher, we used Pamela Allen’s Who Sank the Boat? to 'anchor' our learning. This provided a purposeful context for our STEM challenge.
The STEM Challenge: The Great Boat Regatta Using their learning journals, students explored various boat types and their structural components. They worked through the design process:
- Empathise and Identify the Problem: We put ourselves in the position of the Cow, the Donkey, the Sheep, the Pig, and the tiny Mouse. The problem: How can we get everyone across the water safely without sinking?
- Ideate: Brainstorming how to carry all the story's characters.
- Prototype: Collaborating and building prototypes using aluminium foil, straws, and recycled materials.
- Test and Refine: Testing buoyancy in water tanks and making iterative improvements to their designs.
The unit culminated in a "regatta" at our local beach, where students saw their learning come to life in a real-world environment. This task beautifully weaves together technology and hands-on learning to engage and challenge learners.
What STEM challenges have your students explored recently?
(Slide deck template from Slidesgo; images from Canva.)
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