As a teacher that has been in the STEM and Engineering mindset for the last few years, I've been awkwardly obsessed with Rube Goldberg Projects. But lets be honest, doing a project for fun (the project's sake) is totally against my teaching philosophy at this point in my career. I will say that the process of building a Rube Goldberg machine would have students connect to the CCS 8 Mathematical Practices. So I did my research and found a couple very helpful videos that made me start thinking about this as a cross-curricular project. Eventually I tied this to my probability standards as well as a ridiculous amount of science standards from earth/environmental. So the new task for students was to build a Rube Goldberg Machine that represented a cycle/process in science. And the results were amazing! Here's how I did it.
PLANNING
First my brain storming about what I wanted from students (in google sheets of course).
Then I came up with a run down of how I wanted the week to go.
And finally I called a friend that's a Earth/Environmental Science teacher. She teaches AP as well as freshmen at a high school in the system. She brainstormed a couple options for process/cycles we could use for the game. From there my science teacher from the previous year gathered a video and image resource for each one. We purposely eliminated the student's own research because the other project we gave them for english/history was very research heavy.
MONDAY - INTRODUCTION
So I introduced the concept of a Rube Goldberg Machine on Monday. The presentation involved first introducing them to Rube and some interesting facts about his life. Then I had them look at three drawings and do a classic notice and wonder protocol.
Students wrote their answers to these questions on chart paper with a group and any other information they gathered by looking at the comics. I loved hearing their answers. My favorite question from a group was: "Is this supposed to be easy or complicated?" In the end I took a screen shot of urban dictionary's definition of extra and compared that with Webster's definition of Rube. Then we watched some examples of machines in action. Of course OK GO's music video was shown as an example. So this lead to me clipping down their TED Talk into an Edpuzzle video. Students completed with a partner. Within this video they went over some probability of systems of machines working. So I asked a few questions about how changing the likelihood of a machine working increases the likelihood of the whole machine. So I had students applying independent probability to Rube Goldberg on Day 1. Crazy!
I followed up the previous day by having some students recap the first day, particularly because some students were not there the first day. I went over the expectations for the project. Then I filled out a brainstorming document while the students threw out ideas. I did my example on the four seasons. It looked a little like this:
Then the students accessed the research document and recreated this document for their own processes or cycles that they were assigned. Once they felt confident on understanding their process and had brainstormed, they were given free-range to a number of materials (mostly recycling we stole out of bins) and a few ping-pong balls. We told them to "play in the sandbox of ideas," much like OK GO suggested for their TED Talk. Ultimately they want a plan can work with certainty, so they have to test ideas and see how reliable they are. Some students already had a great start to the project at that point.
REST OF THE WEEK
Wednesday and Thursday were build days. Not a ton of structure happening like previous days, but a lot of coaching, facilitating, and refining ideas. What impressed me the most about the work and working was that it was intentional. Every design, no matter how simple or complex had legitimate reason backing it from the research they did. On Friday we did presentations, reflections, and evaluations. During the presentations they were asked to address the following:
- What is your topic?
- Explain your cycle/process?
- How does your machine illustrate your process/cycle?
- Demonstrate your machine (3 tries max)
- What is a problem you had in your machine, and how did you fix it?
Something different about this project was the way we decided to grade this first week. Our message to the kids through our grading this week said a lot. We really wanted the students to focus on mastering a minimal amount of content in this project and focus on growth mindset, perseverance, grit, and meaningful contributions to their teams. So after we had a lunch break students came back and did a self/peer evaluation and demonstration of knowledge. They completed this google form that focused on the the criteria above.
MY REFLECTION
In all reality, I want to give you a link to ALL my responses from students about the project to let you in on the depth of thinking that went on for some of these kids. Of course not all are impressive, but I'm seriously having a hard time choosing. Since I don't know them academically well (yet!), I'm not sure how hard they pushed themselves. Also, ignore the writing and spelling. We'll be working on that. Below are some of the highlights of what I want to share with you from our students.
I know that this is probably a lot of responses, but I could have kept going. Look at the power these students gained in evaluating themselves and their peers. I definitely should have forewarned about complete sentences and spelling. I just really felt like these things were what I was going for and achieved better than I thought. I tried to remain super flexible in this project and have the kids do the same. I feel as though this is my best executed Project Based Learning to date. As a first week project it was very whirlwind. If I were to grade this on a 4-point rubric, I would have had many interventions with feedback. I would definitely integrate a peer and teacher feedback component during the design process to help students refine thoughts in the future.
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