From Year 8
The Year 8 STEAM year started with students having to complete the Marshmallow Tower Challenge. This involved small teams of students trying to construct the tallest tower they could using only the following materials: 1 metre of tape, 1 metre of string, 20 sticks of spaghetti and 1 singular marshmallow which had to balance on top of the tower.
This challenge helped students utilise the STEAM Design Process which they have been reintroduce to this term.
The next challenge coming up for Year 8 students is to create a marble run from cardboard that falls under specific size measurements and has a set time for the marble to make it down the course. The difficult here is the marble can’t be too fast and can’t be too slow.
To assist students in starting to think about their design they spent a recent lesson putting marble run kits together before timing the how long it took their marble to make the descent. Using the inspiration gained from this lesson the Year 8 students are certain to come up with some exciting courses.
Daniel Sullivan
So far in STEAM this year we have been doing various hands-on projects while applying the STEAM Design Process. A few weeks ago, we had the task to make the largest towers possible with just spaghetti, tape and string. They had to be able to take the weight of a marshmallow, as they were measured from wherever the highest point of the marshmallow was. My group did well and we found the Design Process of Ask, Imagine, Plan, Create, Experiment and Improve was very helpful to have in the back of our minds when we did this task
Ruby C
So far in Steam this year we have done lots of activities regarding the Steam Design Process. The process is six steps including Ask, Imagine, Plan, Create, Test and Improve. To put the process into action we did the marshmallow tower challenge. In the challenge we had to make a tower out of spaghetti, tape and string. I enjoyed this challenge because we got to work with our friends and have lots of fun testing and building.
Matilda O
I am enjoying STEAM. So far, we're doing awesome things like the marshmallow challenge. We had to use dry pasta and tape to hold up a marshmallow using our teamwork. This was very challenging but so fun. The marble run was just like this but even more challenging for our group since we used our wits to build it instead of using the instructions. This type of critical thinking is what we can utilise in workplaces and other places.
Archie B