Float Your Boat

On Tuesday Team Enterprise launched their final PBL unit of the year, "Float Your Boat".

The driving question for this unit is:

How can we, as shipwrights and engineers, design and build boats that will hold our team, using only cardboard, tape, and our knowledge of volume and buoyancy?

Collaborative groups of 3 will be building boats using these math skills then testing the boats in the Central HS pool! What an amazing way to apply these math concepts to a real world situation. Students will also utilize scale and proportion in order to create models prior to full size boats.

To launch this project Ms. Kosinski introduced students to a Sphero challenge, "Pool Party". Collaborative groups were asked to create a boat using given materials (2 styrofoam cups, a piece of cardboard, plastic spoons, and a small amount of duct table) that would be able to navigate a pool and reach specific points. Students would be coding or driving the sphero-motored boat using their iPads.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD_ZROtc7ks

Groups spent a considerable amount of time brainstorming and discussing design plans, issues, and solutions. Once they got building they had to collaborate and agree in order to conserve their limited materials. Once students had a design they were confident in they tested to make sure it would float. Students who got that far went on to begin coding.

At the end of our morning work session, boats were soaked and water-logged, materials were used up, and not a single boat had competed the challenge. We asked students "if you were given the same materials and the opportunity to complete this challenge again, do you think your boat would be more successful". Students answered yes, unanimously. We decided that afternoon to give them a shortened amount of time and new materials to make modifications and try again.

We saw significant improvement in design, construction, and use of time. As we reflected, students identified the major challenges that contributed to the boats not completing the task. We asked them to use this activity and transfer their observations and experiences as we move into our large scale boats.

While few boats completed the challenge successfully, the opportunity to collaborate, engineer, and innovate got students moving in the right direction for our new unit! Let the boat building begin!

Once students had been given more information on the project they will be taking part in, they generated a list of need to know questions with Mr. Pollard. We will use these questions as a guide and attempt to answer them as we navigate this unit. See list below.