Submitted by: Elizabeth Gaglio
School: Chamberlayne
Summary
This project challenges third graders to put both math and science knowledge to work in an economic project. Students changed the physical properties of old crayons by melting and reshaping to make a marketable new product. The students each had jobs like the ones they observed in online research of crayon making. Furthermore, they worked as a team to create a website about our factory and product.
TIPC Ratings
Target – To research crayon factories, students watched videos and visited a variety of websites related to crayons and the crayon making process. From the research, they were able to identify what jobs we would need in our own classroom factory. They generated some of their own questions for research. Later when planning their website, students studied parts of websites and rated them to gain ideas to create their own website about the crayon factory. After rating sites and taking note of the parts of a website, students broke back into their groups and created sample web pages using Google sites.
Target – The students broke into groups and led each other in the tasks. Natural Resource collectors went to classrooms to find old or broken crayons. They continued to use their human resources as the peeling crew peeled the labels to prepare for melting, “melting and molding” crew added crayon nubs to our tree molds, label makers were busy creating labels for cooling crayons, while another group helped advertise and sell the crayons once they had customers. Students advertised the crayons on the school announcements and so far have earned nearly $20! They are going to decide as a group how to spend the funds. They also communicated beyond the school with their crayon factory website. They decided how they wanted to present their information on their page, for example, one group is making a video, another is creating a game and another group wanted to create a poll for consumers to suggest new colors.
Target – students were solving an authentic problem by recycling old crayons and figuring out how to make a profit. They planned every part of the process from tiling the floor of their factory (a cardboard box) using their knowledge of area, to deciding how best to market their product. They reflected on the process and the importance of each part, as well as how to improve it.
Target – The students loved being creative! They came up with unique color names, talked about interviewing our new student before she could join the workforce, and began thinking of online ordering. The activity and their ideas just seemed to stretch endlessly and the students liked becoming known in the school for their craft and knowledge
Student Artifact
Download Files
- Lesson Plan (Word)
- Photo of Crayon Product
- Student created word search for website
- Crayon Factory Website
