Summary
The idea for this Kg design brief came Virtual Share (copy attached). Students researched types of piggy banks using images found by teacher. Next, partnerss drew a blueprint of their piggy bank plan. The building of the piggy bank took place in the classroom and teacher provided various recycled materials. When completed students used iPads to photograph their designs. With the teacher, the students had to count money out from her coin collection and they had to have one nickel, some pennies and had to be more than 5¢ but less than 10¢. Students did a “Museum Walk” of their banks and each group presented their bank to the class. Students could ask questions and make comments.
The next day, the teacher had her computer logged into her VoiceThread account, and had already uploaded the student photos. Whole group, she called partners up to comment on their project on the Voice Thread.
TIPC Ratings
Our research included the use of pictures to spark discussion on kinds of piggy banks, uses, and comparing past to present was a small portion of the lesson, but not a major emphasis.
The inherent collaboration in any Children’s Engineering Design brief was evident, but adding the voice thread and sharing with the community was a large focus of this lesson. This would fall in the low approaching category for Communication and Collaboration.
Students, even at the Kg level can defend their choices and answer questions posed by others as was done in this lesson. For Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, this scored in the Developing category.
Students came up with many different ways to make and find a use for their piggy banks. Adding the coin combination to the task made a relevant age appropriate task. This scored in the low approaching category for Creativity and Innovation.
