Students were now familiar with the prioritized criteria established for their client. They've brainstormed a couple different designs and are in the process of building a working prototype.
Mondays are early release days for us, which means we have 42 minute long periods. I wanted teams to be able to have time to optimize and refine their vehicles, and have more think time for making the vehicle move.
Some questions that I heard today:
- Are you sure the motor is going to spin in the right direction?
- Which of these is going to bend the least?
- How can we increase the resistance in the circuit because we don't want the motor to go fast?
- Can we hot-glue the motor to the car?
- What do you think of our design, Ms. Minjares? Pretty cool, huh?
Oh yeah... and we didn't have sun today... Although the forecast looks alright for the next week!
What relieves some of the anxiety of depending on weather, is knowing that the way the project has been set up, the sun doesn't need to be out during any of our class meetings. This is because one of the two products students are to create is a video proposal intended for an audience of their client. At some point they will have to record video of their vehicle actually working, but it does not have to be during class.
The magical thing about today was how I was able to tell after about 5 seconds of observing a team working together which client they had. LST Inc. teams tended towards a compact but boxy design. Cougar Car Company teams all leaned towards the typical race car silhouette. And the Progressive Builders Construction Company teams were stretching the limits of the size of the cargo bed that would fit onto the fixed-sized axles.
At the start of class I reminded students about the BIG PICTURE, that is to say, the two things they are to produce as a result of this project. I felt that going over this at the start of each class keeps them from thinking that their "project" is just about building their car. I had a couple exchanges with students where when I do my rounds of asking "So, where are we in the process?" they say "Oh we're almost done with our project". Almost immediately, another student will respond to them by saying "We're not done until we have the video done and have our interview questions ready." Success!
The CHAMPS for the day set up the behavioral expectations.
As students worked I walked around and handed back the post-its that had their goal for the weekend and asked them how it went. Some students were honest about not thinking about their project, some said they thought about it but were too busy with other things, few said that they didn't realize that the goal they wrote down was for the weekend but rather the whole project. There were still many students that were excited to report back about something they discovered researching information about solar cars and solar cell technology. I wonder about ways to use goal-setting to motivate action in students.
Here we tried to use a red light bulb as an alternative to the sunlight. Some students chimed in and said that according to their research over the weekend, the solar cells work mostly by collecting UV light.
I'm currently reading Mission High by Kristina Rizga and in it I came across a passage that talked about the value of project-based learning in the context of college and career readiness. The topic of college and career readiness is one that has popped up in professional development meetings at my site, so I was struck by the claim that richer learning happens through carefully executed projects.
"Linda Darling Hammond, professor/researcher of education at Stanford, has found that assessments and tasks designed and scored by skilled teachers, such as essays science projects, research assignments, and presentations are far more effective than standardized tests at promoting learning and diagnosing how students are doing."
For more on this: https://edpolicy.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/accountability-college-and-career-readiness-developing-new-paradigm.pdf
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