Engineering Lesson at Brigham

          On Thursday, we had our last class at Brigham. We taught our engineering lesson in the kindergarten classroom. This lesson was much different than any of the other lessons we taught at Brigham, because it was in a small group setting. There were four teachers with four students. This made for a very personalized experience for the students because we got to work with them one-on-one. In our lesson, we talked about building towers, and what they needed in order for them to be tall. We explained that they needed a large base and plenty of support so they can stand on their own. We brought in pictures of tall buildings around the world as examples for the students to look at while they built their own towers. These pictures ended up being instrumental in helping the students understand the lesson. They looked at the buildings and wanted to make their towers just like these buildings.

          After we explained what towers needed in order to be tall, and what we were doing in our lesson, we handed pipe cleaners and straws out to each student. Their task was to build a tall tower that could stand on its own. We told the students that we were having this issue, and we needed their help. From the very beginning, the students were very excited and engaged during this lesson. They really enjoyed building with the pipe cleaners and straws. It was also very helpful that we were able to give the students a one-on-one experience because some of the students were not getting it and needed the extra help from a teacher. The boy that I was working with, did not get the idea that you needed a base and supports in order to build the tower. He was very concerned about having the tallest tower, and didn’t seem to care if it stood on its own or not. When I tried to talk to him about it, he didn’t really seem to understand. I’m not sure if this was because of the language barrier and he couldn’t understand me, or if this was because he truly did not understand the concept of this lesson. He did grab the pictures, and looked off of those most of the time, so I’m very glad we did print those out for them to look at. Although the other students didn’t seem to look at it much, I’m glad it helped him. Some of the other students really seemed to understand the lesson, and actually built a tower that was pretty tall that stood on its own.

          I think this lesson helped me reach my goal, because I had to find different ways to talk to the boy that I was working with, to help him understand. We used the pictures, and that really seemed to help him. I’m glad that we thought to bring in a visual for them to look at. The picture below is the sheet with the buildings that we brought in as a visual for the students.

EXCEEDS: Included picture of the visual we used.