Wondering how to take stem challenges and make them into bite-sized portions? In this post, I will be sharing how to create a 30-minute stem challenge lesson plan for any teacher to implement. The lesson will go through the engineering design process but accommodate the shortened lesson time.
When is a 30 Minute Stem Challenge Appropriate?
These types of lesson plans can be beneficial to many teachers in different settings. There are many differences between a 30-minute stem challenge versus a multi-day design challenge. Among many of them are that 30-minute lesson plans will not be complex design challenges. They will involve few materials, have prearranged materials by the teacher, students will not involve other skills such as math, or incorporate extended research components.
Even though the design challenge is shortened, they will still need to write and sketch out their responses on an engineer’s report. You can sign up to get a free one-page one here to save you time on creating it.
If you’re more interested in learning what a full-blown design challenge looks like, read this lesson for the Boat Stem Challenge by clicking here.
When Can You Use a 30 Minute Lesson Plan?
- Back to school community-building activity for kids
- During a Fun Friday Party
- During half-day weeks for cart- stem teachers
- Sub Plans
- Great for cart-stem teachers who travel from class to class
- A fun zoom activity for celebration days
Now that you know when you will be teaching 30-minute lessons, read below to see how you can modify a stem challenge to be shorter and simplified.
Step 1: Ask (5 Minutes)
In the ask step, you will introduce or share the problem the engineers of the day will be designing. They will write their problem in their own words and list out the criteria for a successful design. In addition to that, they will also list out the constraints that they will abide by.
The design will be very simple and straightforward for these lessons. Examples of good stem challenges can be read down below:
- Built a Boat that floats. I have this stem challenge, that would work really well for a modified 30-minute lesson.
- Build a Catapult
- Design a paper bridge or use any materials as addressed in this challenge
- Design a marble run. This is a great lesson for 4th-grade energy.
Step 2: Research (5 minutes)
Usually, students have anywhere from 25-60 minutes to complete this step. To modify the research, you can have students view example designs and rate the designs. They can also brainstorm their own ideas after discussing it with their group mates. As the teacher, you can also present examples of materials that have worked well for this project. The students can take those materials, and come up with their own designs.
On the engineer report, they can brainstorm their ideas in bulleted form or simply sketch their ideas.
Step #3: Plan (5 minutes)
In this phase, students can work in pairs or groups of 4. Read more about building jobs for kids during group work by clicking here. They will share their brainstormed list or sketches that they completed during the research phase. Then they will vote on which person’s idea they will decide to build. Students can also work together to create a design that meshes a few students’ ideas together.
The students should have a final sketch and a list of materials for their design on their engineer report.
Step #4: Build (10 minutes)
In this step, each of the students will have a job. They can either rotate the jobs every 2 minutes or they can keep their jobs for the entirety of the build session. Because it is such a short session, I would recommend the students just keep one job. You can have an inspector. These students can have a phone recording the building session. You can also have the supplier who is in charge of the supplies. The project manager is the person who gives directions to the builder, and the builder is the student that takes directions from the project manager and receives the materials from the supplier.
You can read more about it in my Ebook for Stem Job Roles.
Step #5: Test & Communicate (5 minutes)
Usually, design challenges have a separate test and communicate step. In this type of lesson, the students will test their designs according to whatever is outlined in the criteria. Then the students will write their responses with their thoughts and reflections on their paper. For the test step, the will do a sketch of their final and built design. In the ‘communicate’ step, they will answer such as “How did your design perform?” and “What could have been changed about the design?”
A teacher can call on one person from each group to share their sentence, or they can do a museum walk and read what other students did in their engineer reports.
Extra Tips for Delivering in 30 Minutes
When delivering these types of lessons, it is very important to note that they are very different and the purpose behind them is also different. They are like the bite-sized appetizers of design challenges, whereas full-blown design challenges can take days, weeks, and even months to complete. To be successful in these types of lessons, read the quick tips below.
- Don’t expect perfection from your students. The designs will be basic with only 10 minutes to build.
- Review growth mindset prior to the challenge and after. There will be students who feel overwhelmed, so provide them with as much support you can in the beginning. Eventually, they will take off with their amazing ideas and confidence.
- Have a list of ready-to-go supplies in baggies for your students. This will help with keeping to the time restriction.
- Allow your students to fail during the test step. Let them know that not everyone’s design will pass, but that it doesn’t define them as engineers. In fact, engineers fail many times before they come to the final destination.
You can grab the really engaging Eiffel Tower challenge by clicking here. It would make for the perfect quick and easy challenge because all the students need is a fork and 5 other materials to make the fork stand up on its own for 30 seconds.
This Freebie is on me!
Looking to embed ELA with science (or vice versa)? Get these writing prompts that will get your students thinking about what they’re learning in science class as they practice their writing skills!
Where can I find the cute job cards and job descriptions?
Here's the link! https://view.flodesk.com/pages/5ef615f2d31e9c00260ab614 Also, thanks!