Boat Stem Challenge Activity 

Who is it this stem challenge for?

How long will it take?

If you are a teacher completing this activity in the classroom: 

If you are a classroom teacher during distance learning: 

If you are a parent or guardian and completing this at home: 

Floating or Sinking Boat Stem Challenge

ASK: What’s the problem?

As the students move into the research stage in engineering, students should be researching ideas or thinking about how to solve the problem. To get around the technology, students can collaborate using break out rooms or a shared Google document. To learn how to create a shared Google document, you can click here.

One tip I have for collaboration on shared slides is to have different colored boxes for the different group members. You can assign a color to each member, and this way you can see quite easily which students completed what on the shared document. 

Plan: How Can I Build My Boat to Float?

If you are a teacher completing this activity in the classroom: 

To plan, students will get together with their peers and decide on which peers’ sketch and ideas they will be working on. In middle school, students need to create a criteria rubric to choose the design from their group, but in elementary they can simply go in a row and review each of their peers’ sketches and plans. 

 

Once they have reviewed each group mate’s sketch, they can decide which of the designs fulfills the criteria and meets the constraint guidelines. As a group, they can decide how they would like to take the base plan and get creative with it. 

If you are a classroom teacher during distance learning: 

Once students have completed the research and have an idea of what they’ll be building, they can start sketching and planning the steps on how to build. 

 

My students sketch using Google shapes tools in the Slides or Doc pages, and I explicitly model how to do that for them during the live sessions. This helps a lot with their understanding of how to connect those shapes to make it look like an image. 

 

Once the students have figured out what they want their design to look like, they go into the Create/Build/Design stage and build the boat at home. They use whatever materials they have, and they have a blast!!

 

I have seen some amazing projects by my students, and I know you are going to be thrilled to see what your students produce as well! 

 

 

If you are a parent or guardian and completing this at home: 

In this step, your child should be creating a final draft of their sketch and plan of how they will be building. They can create this on graph paper with clear lines using a ruler and labeling all parts of the sketch. They can also try to sketch it on a tablet in a document. 

 

This plan should have clear directions on what materials they will be using, how much of the materials, the steps of the build, and what the final design should look like. 

Build: Putting it all together

If you are a teacher completing this activity in the classroom: 

Have students get into their groups and provide them with building jobs. To read more about stem building jobs or team roles, click here. I usually switch off jobs every 5-7 minutes, so every student gets to try each of the job roles during build day. 

 

 

 

During this time, I am walking around the room and monitoring the students. I don’t usually provide answers, but I probe and ask questions to students who may be struggling. Here you can find a list of 10 questions to ask students to get them thinking in stem class. 

 

If a group finishes before the time is up, I will have them take photos and record some videos on their design. 

Test: How effective was the design?

If you are a teacher completing this activity in the classroom: 

For this step, get your students in the whole group and call each group one by one to test their design. Place the group’s boat in a tub of water and then have a student place the 4 coins in the boat. Another student should be timing the occurrences that happen. 

 

How long was the boat floating? When did the boat start to sink? Which side did it sink from? If the boat stays afloat, another condition you can provide is by having a “wind storm.” Blow air from a hairdryer and see what happens to the boat. 

 

 

 

Your students will have extra fun observing the tests and jotting them down in their engineering journals. 

If you are a classroom teacher during distance learning: 

For the next stage, the Evaluate/Test Stage, you can have the students test at home and have their parents record or take photos. Many of my students did this. Their parents either emailed me the photos/videos, or the students uploaded it into the spot just for that in the engineering journal I had created for them. 

 

I did not make it mandatory for all of the students to send me any videos or photos. If they were not able to document that way, they could always describe it in writing. 

 

Another way that you can test out the boats via Distance Learning is by having your students show up during a live session with their boats and water containers. You will then see your students test each of their boats. 

 

I absolutely love this option for testing boats because all of the other students will also see what the results are for their peers. A great conversation could be had at the end of that stem project. 

 

 

 

If you are a parent or guardian and completing this at home: 

In this step, your child needs to test the design by putting the boat in a tub of water. When they put the required 4 quarters in that represent people, what happens? Does the boat sink or float? If it sinks, how long was the boat floating for?

 

This is also a great time to think of reflection questions. Why did the boat sink or float? What could have been improved or adjusted? Many times, children will get to this step and then want to go back to ‘Plan’ to try again. Stem challenges are the gift that keeps giving because designs can always be improved! 

 

 

Share: Communicating the Results

If you are a teacher completing this activity in the classroom: 

Have the students present in their groups to the rest of the class. They can create posters, digital presentations, or create videos using Inshot. These can be presented to the entire class as the students provide feedback in a constructive way. 

If you are a classroom teacher during distance learning: 

Your students can share by creating multimedia presentations or they can answer reflection questions orally in the live session. Another way that this can be done during distance learning is for students to upload their video explanations on Flip Grid. On that platform, the students can even respond to their peers’ presentations by providing video feedback as well. 

 

If you are a parent or guardian and completing this at home: 

This is a very important step that shouldn’t be skipped. Engineers communicate their ideas to others, so find a family member, sibling, neighbor, or even Facebook Live so your child can present their design to others. They need to describe the enter process of what the problem was, how to they researched and planned to come up with their ideas, what their sketches looked like, what it was like building the design, and how effective the design was.