Towards the end of Term 2, Room 9 spent the week working on some Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) bridge building challenges. 

This week Mr. Boon set up some challenges for students in Room 9. On Monday, students were split into five groups of 5 and began their first challenge - to build a bridge using just dried sticks of spaghetti. The bridge had to be free standing, that is, not stuck down or held in place somehow. Added to the challenge, bridges had to be able to hold 250 grams of weight. 

Some groups were successful, others were not!

Part two of STEM week took the bridge building to whole other level. Only using 10 small sheets of newspaper and as much sticky-tape and kebab sticks as they needed, students need to build a bridge that spanned one entire metre. 

But what did the students think?

HOLLIE: I really enjoyed this project because it was challenging to try and get the spaghetti not to break. 
RUBY S: We got to work together to try and build a bridge and stabilise it. 
EVIE: We got to do something interesting. 
AZARIAH: I enjoyed it because we worked together.
CONOR: We got to work in a group and we got to talk to each other.
REGAN: I liked it because it was hard to build without ripping the newspaper. 
COOPER: I liked it because it was challenging.
RUBY N: I enjoyed it because we got to work together and do new things with groups of people we probably wouldn't normally work with. 
AMY: I liked it because I got to try new things. 
TAHLIA: I enjoyed it because we got to work together. 
ISOBEL: We all got to build a little bit of our idea onto our structures. 
LOGAN: It was really hard to use the spaghetti without breaking it. 
BLAKE: I liked it because it was hard trying to figure out how to put things together to make the bridge stand up. 

The key to these STEM challenges is to get students working on problems in a collaborative way. A great chance to get some experience the type of collaborative problem solving they are likely to meet when working in the real world. Students also got the chance to solve problems through trial and error. Failing to succeed is an essential part of learning and building resilience!