We have some future architects and engineers here in Christine Erickson’s second-grade class at PBE!
Ms. Erickson had her students work in teams to do a tower building activity for their science unit: material matters. The students were instructed to build towers with index cards and paper clips. They put their engineering hats on and had to figure out how to use the materials in the best way possible.
The first assignment was to build the tallest tower. They started out with 20 index cards and some paper clips. Higher and higher the towers grew. If they wanted to try and add more index cards and clips, they got more to build an even taller tower. The tallest tower ended up being 24 inches tall!
The second assignment was to build the strongest tower. The students recycled their cards from the day before and set out to build a strong tower, strong enough to hold a book on top of it. Every time they added a level, they put the book on it to test the tower’s strength. Then they would measure again. By the time the activity was finished, the strongest tower was 18 1/2 inches tall!
These second-graders really enjoyed working on this project – one student even built towers from home! They discovered the importance of working together and sharing ideas.
