the mini marvels of curiosity and wonder

In this unit, students explore six essential mindsets that are characteristics of "STEM Pros": Work Hard, Be Creative, Be Ok with Making Mistakes, Take Risks, and Believe in the Power of Yet!

Each lesson follows the same pattern.  

• Start with a read-aloud
• Introduce the growth mindset topic (presentation slides link below)
• Practice with a simple design challenge
• Evaluate performance 
• Training our Brain coloring page (link below)

All of these design challenges are individual challenges because I want students to focus on their work, their thinking, and their resilience.

This book explores how a box can become anything with a little imagination.  

For the design challenge, I provide students with a sheet of paper featuring an image that resembles half of a heart.

They must complete the drawing, turning the half-heart into anything their imagination can come up with.  

I have students walk around and look at everyone's creations to see how original theirs was.  You'll be amazed at what these tiny brains come up with!

In this book, a girl envisions the most magnificent thing, but just can't seem to build it.  Through her frustrations and mistakes, she realizes if she puts all of her mistakes together, it will create her most magnificent thing. 

Students receive a bucket of "stuff" from which they must make the most magnificent thing.  

I focus on them imagining something amazing they can create from the materials in the bucket.  Then, they have to make their idea come to life.  

Emphasize that they may make mistakes along the way, and that's ok!  It's all part of the process of designing. 

In this story, Violet gets teased by kids at school for being a weirdo whose family owned a junkyard.  But she was an inventor and an engineer.  She didn't let anyone sway her from taking risks to engineer her next amazing flying machine.  

Students receive a single sheet of construction paper and are challenged to create anything from their imagination.  They can use scissors, glue, and tape.

It is almost certain that one or more students will come to you and ask for a new sheet of paper because they "messed up".  BUT DON'T DO IT!  Encourage them to think about how to change their design to fit what remains of their paper or create something new. Also, remind them that's ok to make mistakes!

This is a little about creating and A LOT about bravery to cut and persevering through the mistakes. 

For this design challenge, I give students 3 index cards and tell them they must make a bridge.  Seems simple, right? Not really, most students try to stand two cards on their side to make pylons and they quickly realize this doesn't work.  Typically, at least one student will think about folding two of the cards instead. 

I allow students to do a "walk and think" to see if anyone came up with an idea that worked.  I encourage students who couldn't build the bridge during the first round to try again with new ideas. 

I reinforce the idea that it's not that you can't do it, you just can't do it yet.  Sometimes you just need a little inspiration.

 Once students start to grasp the magic of a growth mindset in STEM and get their feet wet, it’s time to move on to the next challenge ... teamwork. 

 The lesson begins with a read-aloud of "A Little Spot of Teamwork," which outlines steps for effective teamwork and illustrates a disagreement between two students. 

Following the reading, the class discusses effective collaboration, analyzing the characters' actions and teamwork skills used to resolve their conflict.  

 In this unit, students will focus on collaboratively designing a trap as a team. The emphasis will be on teamwork rather than engineering design. These are the key teamwork concepts I want my students to engage with. 

Since I teach this 3 week unit to 5 different rotations of kids, I am teaching it through different holidays/seasons.  Therefore, we've designed traps for turkeys, gingerbread men, and snowmen, depending on which time period the students are with me. 

Each lesson introduces a new teamwork concept that students will be mindful of as they work through the stages of the engineering design process to build their trap.  

At the end of each lesson, students reflect on the teamwork objective from both their individual viewpoints and the overall team perspective.  I use these to assess students' feelings about themselves and their team.  Comparing the two can reveal interesting insights; for instance, if a student rates themselves positively but their team negatively, it prompts a necessary conversation to understand the situation. 

Want to see what we do in each lesson?  Check it out below!