STEM Project in 5th Grade!

The Math and Science classes in fifth grade did a STEM project on Mayflower Mild Cartons. The students had to collect their milk cartons that they drank from at lunch. Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Edgar supplied the balloons and the straws. They basically had to build a boat and use the straws as the track to slide along the fishing line, and the balloon was blown up to make the boat travel down the fishing line to the finish line, There was along of critical thinking involved in this race, and cooperation among group members was a key.They were given 3 days to work on this, and to do test trials. The final day, the top ten times from all of the fifth grade classes, were the teams who were in the finals. The teams that were in the finals raced against each other bracket style. The winners received lunch with Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Edgar, large candy bars and 100 bonus bucks to use in Mrs. Davis's class. Math terms that were covered were data analysis, measurement in metric units, and Science terms used were speed, friction, momentum, potential and kinetic energy. The students were graded on several areas including team work, critical thinking, lab report completion, group discussion and presentation of results along with sportsmanship. The fifth graders really enjoyed this project.