by Candace Coffee
| I first reached out to Candace Coffee back in the spring of 2020, when the pandemic hit and she generously shared some fabulous choice boards (find them HERE). Candace is the GT Educator/Specialist for Princeton ISD in Texas, and when she recently shared this holiday STEAM activity via social media, I reached out again to see if she might be willing to give more details! Enjoy! And if you try this, show your thanks and share your experience in the comments below! You can find additional holiday ideas HERE. |
I am always looking for lessons and activities that give my GT learners an opportunity to design, build, and be creative, so when a colleague sent me this DIY Marble Maze Video I knew I had to find a way to incorporate it into an upcoming lesson.
With the holidays right around the corner, I thought it would be fun to do some sort of holiday designed maze. One of my favorite ways to open up a lesson is to incorporate literature. It’s especially effective for introducing a STEM/STEAM design challenge because stories set a tone and a context for the challenge. So I started looking up different holiday books to see if I could find one that could easily be translated into a marble maze.
Somehow I stumbled across The Gingerbread Man Loose at Christmas by Laura Murray, and I knew that her graphic novel-style illustrations would capture my students’ attention and that the story would translate perfectly to a design challenge of the Gingerbread Man and his friends racing through town delivering their cards and gifts.
Design Challenges can be very overwhelming, especially for creative learners who have so many different ideas at one time. I have found that having a routine/structure that is followed for every challenge really helps keep chaos from taking over. In my classroom, this means utilizing the Engineer Design Process every time we complete a STEM/STEAM design challenge. We ASK, IMAGINE, PLAN, CREATE, EXPERIMENT, IMPROVE, and SHARE utilizing our STEM journals to keep track of our thinking. We have done this so often that if I miss a step (like SHARE) my learners will actually get onto me about forgetting to do it. HERE is the STEM Journal I created for the Marble Maze Design Challenge.
Typically we read the challenge letter together and discuss what the problem is we are trying to solve and write that down under ASK. After that, I give the learners about 3 minutes to imagine a solution on their own before getting together with a partner or group. I want them to take ownership of the task and have buy-in before getting with other students. I think this is especially important for introverted learners and learners that need extra thinking time. They come prepared to collaborate. Then students have about 10 minutes to plan with their group (if working in a group). Learners must show me their plans (including a materials list) before moving on to the CREATE part of the task. Then they are given 30-40 minutes to create, experiment, and improve before sharing their designs. More times than not my learners get so into the task at hand that we end up spending more than 40 minutes creating and improving!
If you get a chance to try this activity in your classroom, be sure to share your thoughts and comments below. I would love to hear how it went.
My 4th grade GATE class loved doing this project. I got the boxes with the low sides at Aldi, which were perfect. Since I didn’t have playdough, the kids added things like tissue tubes, cotton, pipe cleaners, foil, etc. It was so fun!
Brenda, thanks for sharing this! I know Candace will be so happy to know that what she shared led to a fun and engaging holiday activity in your classroom! I thinking you’re a member of our Facebook group. Would you mind also sharing this with the group and tagging Candace? She’d love it. Merry Christmas!