Engineering Strand

In this project, students will engineer weather-proof structures to withstand rain, wind, sunlight, or heat. The goal is to develop their understanding of structural integrity and resilience in diverse weather conditions. Applying engineering and architecture principles, students will create durable structures that offer adequate shelter, gaining practical insights into the real-world applications of their academic knowledge.

For this lesson, the students had to work together to come up with a design for web that could hold many small items. They had to discuss the design idea and sketch it out on paper. When they started designing, they had to figure out what materials they needed to use to build their web and they had to determine how they needed to space the materials to make the web study enough to hold smaller items. 

The students then had to test their webs using unifix cubes as the “spiders” that the web had to hold. We counted by 10s and sometimes counted on by 1s to see how many spiders each web could hold. 

The class then had to observe other webs to determine how they could improve their web when they got a chance to redesign. 

Lastly, the students took their new ideas from the observations of the test section and redesigned their webs. They tested the redesigns to see if the webs now held more “spiders” than last time.

• Students were introduced to the problem after observing photos of the harvest.
• Group discussion of the problems observed including produce growing on wet grass, rotting produce, needs of plants, less produce than previous year.
• Students followed EDP steps by asking questions to define the problem, reviewing materials and constraints, brainstorming a plan by creating a sketch, using materials to build a prototype, and providing feedback for improvement.
• Students related learning to other subjects including the arts, ELA, SEL, and farm to school gardening.