This is a 360 degree video, shot simultaneously by four cameras and stitched together instantaneously.
Press play, scroll around the video, zoom in and out on your choice of activity to see what is happening.
ENGINEERING FRIDAYS
Engineering Fridays are a time for kindergarteners to experience different construction materials and practice with the Engineering Design Process. Children stay in stations for a set amount of time, sometimes with a task and sometimes to free-build. They work with multiple materials each Friday. In this video you will see several different types of engineering stations and activities including:
* roller coasters - looking at task cards and trying to design a roller coaster with the same incline and exchange pattern, dropping the coaster wheel into the correct bin.
* lego wall - building legos on a vertical plane (the wall)
* lego table - building legos on a horizontal plane (the table)
* marble run - designing chutes and funnels to drop marbles through a set path
* bridge builders - using long, tooth-filled sticks to build structures to hold weight
* home builders - using flat plane shapes with teeth to connect and build solid structures
* magnet blocks - using flat plane shapes with magnets to connect and build solid structures
* gears - designing a network of intertwined plastic gears so that turning one gear affects the turning of others
* chromebooks - playing math games from abcya and other sources to practice math skills from the classroom
* iPads - playing math and engineering games to practice skills from the classroom
ENGINEERING DESIGN PROCESS
For some stations (the three back tables in this video), children use paper to draw designs before they begin building. They talk about their designs and then build a product together. They are taught to ASK a question (or the teacher asks the question), IMAGINE a way to answer the question/problem/task, PLAN the solution or creation, CREATE a product or solution, and IMPROVE on their creations. The girls at the back middle table had a plan for a building, and the boy had an addition to it that would make it better. They worked together to build the improved design.
PARTNERSHIPS
This video was shot through a partnership with Tennessee Tech's College of Education. A large part of STEM in kindergarten is partnering with TTU faculty like Holly Anthony, Jason Beach, Amber Spears, and Stephanie Wendt to bring Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math alive for students. The resources and knowledge of experts at TTU have given us access to materials and state-of-the-art gadgets, new and innovative ideas, and cool technology like the BublCam that shot this video.