Magnets and Trains?

December 21, 2016

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    Most humans spend over 95% of their time interacting with technology.  Pencils, chairs, water filters, magnets, and building are just a few of them.  Solutions designed by engineers fulfill human needs or wants in everyday life.  Children are born engineers.  They are fascinated with building, with taking things apart, and with how things work.  One of my roles as the Lead STEM Coach is to give these types of opportunities to our students at Central Lyon.  Through a grant, I am able to use 11 Engineering is Elementary (EIE) programs that integrates engineering with elementary science topics by connecting them to literacy, social studies, and mathematics along with the program materials. To grab the students' interest, the phenomena of the world's fast train (in a video), which travels at a max speed of 373 mph, was shown.  All of our work in class was linked to that short video.  Through a unit on magnets, the 3rd grade students were able to gain enough knowledge by working in a collaborative environment to develop MAG LEV train system of their own. The student were able to employ creativity and problem solving skills to complete many tasks.  Topics of how magnets attract and repel in different situations, and ideas of how the force of magnets can decrease and increase in different situations took learning about magnets to another level.  Take a look at the photo gallery to see some of the systems the 3rd grade students designed and the smiling face of all of them.