​​‘Spinning fairy tales’ with STREAM

Above: Second graders at Our Lady of Prompt Succor School in Chalmette “huffed and puffed,” and, fortunately, couldn’t blow down the houses they designed and built for “The Three Little Pigs.” (Photo by Beth Donze; view more photos on the Clarion Herald’s Facebook page)

By BETH DONZE
Clarion Herald

Make no mistake about it: The second graders huddled over their work inside the STREAM Lab at Our Lady of Prompt Succor (OLPS) School in Chalmette weren’t just “playing with blocks” during a recent lesson.

They were working their way through the very adult engineering process of formulating a design, transforming that design into concrete form and testing their creation to complete an exciting challenge: to design and build a miniature “house” that was large enough to hold all three little pigs – and also sturdy enough not to topple over when they blew on it.

“We’re going to take a few minutes to look at what we have in our boxes, and then I want each of you to spend about five minutes coming up with a design for your house,” instructed Rachel Vogt, OLPS’ lab facilitator, after reading the story of “The Three Little Pigs” to the larger group. “Then, I want you to discuss your ideas with your partner and pick one. You can combine your ideas into one, but you can only choose one design!”

Other than giving her students these basic instructions, Vogt deliberately didn’t hover over her young engineers or tell them what to do.

“It’s up to them to start thinking about the design process, so I don’t want to give them any preconceived notions,” Vogt said. “We want them to start learning how to be thinkers!”

Vogt commended her second graders for coming up with sturdy home designs, each one unique despite having been built from the same box of components.

Fairy tale fun

“The Three Little Pigs” is just one of six fairy tales OLPS second and third graders are using this school year as a springboard for exploring engineering design and construction while using their creativity.

For “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” they were challenged to build a chair that could hold all three bears; they built rafts – and tested their seaworthiness in a pan of water – after reading “The Gingerbread Man”; they built towers, inspired by “Rapunzel”; a bridge for “The Three Billy Goats Gruff”; and a basket for “Little Red Riding Hood.”

“Our lab has a lot of technology, but our students need these hands-on projects to go with the technology,” Vogt said. "I tell them, ‘Let me hand you a box (of building materials). Let’s open up the box and explore what the possibilities are!‘”

In Vogt’s lab space of self-directed and small-group learning, “I don’t want them to raise their hands” to ask a lot of questions.

”My job as a facilitator is to keep them on track,” Vogt said. “I teach them to speak to their partner first, and then to speak to the people around them who are working on the same project – so they can help each other. If I see they’re at a spot where they’re stuck, I’ll go in to see how I can facilitate. Maybe we need to go on the internet or find a book (in the lab’s library of 13,000 volumes). Or maybe we need to see what the company says about the product or look at the instructions again. They love their time in the lab!”

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