Problem Solving Bonanza
Yep - there is a kiddie pool set up in my classroom. Yes, we flooded the room trying to dump it out in the sink.
Other than the water catastrophe, this project was a great success. This was the kick-off to unit 1 of the Computer Science Discoveries from Code.org. Students worked in pairs or groups of three to design a foil boat that could hold the most weight. I gave them a limited amount of foil and a small strip of tape. They had only 15 minutes to plan and build their boats before testing began.
So what does a foil boat have to do with computer science? The problem-solving process! In computer science we are constantly solving problems, and learning to do so effectively is one of the keys to success. Before starting their boats I shared a graphic showing the 4 steps to the problem-solving process: Define, Plan, Try, Reflect; and simply asked my students to try to recognize when they were doing these things during the activity.
As a beginning of the year activity, this was a great chance for me to walk the room and get a feeling for how different students worked together. I purposely tried not to help with boat design other than to clarify any questions about expectations or requirements. After 15 minutes were up we tested our boats in the aforementioned classroom-flooding kiddie pool. Student groups took turns adding pennies to the boat to see how much weight they could support.
By the time testing was over we were about out of time for class. As a wrap up we had a big group discussion, no written reflection on this one. Students first shared what worked well in their designs and what they thought they might do differently if given the chance to redesign. Then we came back to the problem-solving process and they shared out how they had used each of the stages. I had to coax this part a bit and I jumped in a few times to point out observations I had made while they were working.
Then we attempted to clean-up....dumped water all over the floor....then I remembered that the last time the kiddie pool was used we bailed water out BEFORE trying to dump it. Hindsight really is 20/20!
I know someone will ask how I graded this. Truthfully, I didn't. This was an introductory activity, I will have plenty of chances to assess them using the problem-solving process later on. In a future post I'll share a checklist that I often use to assess problem-solving and other cooperative skills during labs and group work.
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