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STEAM at Atco Elementary: Race Car Ramp

This LibGuide will provide a description and importance of what STEAM is and what it looks like on our K-1 school. It will list different activities that we do in our school that involve our new STEAM enrichment.

Suggested Book

Annotated Bibliography: 

Maisy and her friends have a car race.

Additional books

Activity

Question

 

Can you create a ramp that will make a race car go the farthest distance?                             

        

 

Challenge Description: Students will create a simple ramp out of cardstock, unifix/linking cubes, and scotch tape. They may use one or both materials to create the height and “track,” experimenting with different heights and lengths. They will test their ramps with toy racecars, measuring the distance that the racecar travels with unifix/linking cubes.

 

Suggested Materials: informational books about pushes and pulls, cardstock, unifix or linking cubes, scotch tape, toy racecars

Lesson Plan

Lesson Plans                                         

  1. Prime students’ background knowledge about force and motion by reading aloud an informational book of your choice. You may also choose to project a variety Google images of ramps on an interactive whiteboard and discuss the similarities and differences.                    

  2. Hold a class discussion, allowing students to share what they already know about pushes and pulls and what they might like to learn. Record their ideas on the provided teacher chart. Have them write the words “push” and “pull” on the front page.                                             

  3. Introduce permitted materials and share the challenge. Allow students to share ideas for how the materials work and might fit together in different ways to make a ramp. Ask them how pushes and pulls might be useful. Model how to use unifix cubes as nonstandard units of measurement to measure how far their racecar travels.                                             

  4. Allow students at least 45 minutes with partners or small groups to create and test a variety of designs, as well as record in their STEM journals. Encourage them to improve their designs after each test to try to make their racecar go farther.        

  5. Hold a whole class closing discussion and reflection, allowing students to share what they created and what they learned about pushes and pulls. Record their ideas on the provided teacher chart and guide students as they complete their individual booklets.