Structures and Materials STEM Activities | Paper and Digital

Have your students work with various materials to design and test structures for stability. These STEM tasks encourage students to research, design, and build different structures to test them to support different loads, stand up to testing and figure out how shapes, widths and heights work best.

This hands-on resource includes:

• instructions for how to set up and run this activity, ways to modify the tasks and materials to use.
• over twenty different open-ended tasks for students to try. Some can be completed in a few minutes while others can be worked on for a few hours.
• a list of science concepts to be learned with each task.
• instructions on how to use the design process throughout these tasks.
• teaching instructions for each task with the problem, materials, task, discussion questions and helpful tips for teachers.
• student task poster for each task (with a digital version to reduce printing).
• student planning pages (for individuals and groups).
• student self-assessment pages (for individuals and groups).
• a rubric with hints about how to mark student learning.
• tasks that help students learn how width, height, shape, load distribution and materials contribute to the stability of structures.
  

Answer keys are not included, as the whole point of this challenge is to work through problems with divergent thinking. We have included advice and suggestions where possible.

Suggested materials: 

• a variety of recyclable materials, straws, plasticine/modelling clay, toothpicks, wood sticks, stir sticks, wood skewers, a variety of tape (clear, masking, packing, duct), different types of glue, hot glue guns, different types of paper, newspaper, cardboard, string or thread, weights (choose a standard item), multiple decks of cards, spaghetti/linguine/lasagna (long pasta) , OR anything else students think to use that is safe and available.

This activity supports:

• any upper elementary or middle school science unit about building structures.
• using the design process.

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Ninja Note: This file is a PDF. To print or access the digital version, download the file.

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