Building Bridges
                                                           By:  Victoria Grace​

Project at a Glance :

This project introduces elementary students to the process of bridge construction and engineering.  Students will learn about bridge structure and design, deepening their understanding of forces; all while growing comfortable with the process of problem-solving and evaluation.  Elementary Science - 3 to 4 week project  
 
Driving Question:
​How can we design a bridge in Michigan that would safely allow people to travel from one neighborhood to another, without taking the highway?          

Standards:

• Engineering Design Stds:  3-5-ETS1-1,  3-5-ETS1-2,  3-5-ETS1-3, &  3-PS2-1  
• Skills4Success:  Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, Collaboration, Flexibility and Adaptability, and Technology Literacy

Team / Culture Building:

•  Students were allowed to choose their groups. By giving them choice, their excitement grew tremendously! Students discussed what it means to build a strong group prior to forming their own project group.

Entry Event:

• Students were given a variety of materials to build a bridge that would hold five plastic tokens using the Paper Bridge Design Challenge from Science Buddies.org.  ​

Stakeholders:

• People living in the surrounding neighborhoods of Zeeland, Michigan.

Empathy Building:

• Watch news video from 1940 of a bridge collapsing. 

Inquiry / Need to Knows:

• Create a sticky note wall or Padlet  to share our  our Need to Knows for building a bridge strong enough for bikers and walkers to use.
• Embed a mini lesson on forces into the PBL unit
• Invite an expert panel (including a civil engineer and structural engineer) for students to interview.
• Host a classroom transformation day where students all “work” for an engineering firm. Students will test and rank the strength of various materials.

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Incubation:

• ​Conduct a Stretch Thinking activity - “Can you say more about…?”, to further dive into the problem
• Idea Quota - 50 ideas in 5 minutes
• Anti-Problem - What would the opposite of the driving question be?​

• Use activities that involvement movement - write an idea then rotate to a new space/Gallery Walk

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Solution Building:

• Embed lessons on Force

• Interview engineers, with experience with in structural work and management, to teach students about bridge design. Engineers will focus on design, material and labor costs, and what is involved in planning and building a bridge.
• Classroom Transformation - Towards the end of the project, students will run tests on a variety materials to determine the most durable and cost effective materials to use in construction. 
• Decision Making - Students will make a final decision, with regards to which material they should use to design their bridge based on test results.  By running hands-on tests, students gain real-world insight into the strengths and weaknesses of specific materials/resources.

Critique and Revision: 

• Midway through the project students will pitch their ideas to other groups for feedback.​

Authentic Audience:

• Engineers from Chicago were interviewed during the project, then students 'pitched' their solution ideas for the engineers 'judges' to choose the best overall bridge design.

Final Presentation:

• Each student creates a Padlet, to document their PBL journey, including their final bridge design plans.
  
  

​Click here teacher's full plan.

​Reflection and Feedback:

• Project rubric

Click here for the  teacher's Journey through PBL on Padlet.

Meet the Educator:
Victoria Graces teaches 4th grade for Zeeland Public Schools.  
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     "I am passionate about PBL because I believe students should be positioned as investigators of the world around them. As educators, we should encourage our students to ask questions and dive into their curiosity!"