This week, we tackled a pretty complex subject for third graders- globalization! The students did several activities to help them understand how we are globally connected, especially with regards to natural resources and product engineering.
Reading Discussions
Just for fun, and because it's such a great story, we started out by reading Amelia and Eleanor Go for a Ride. This allowed us to review a little American history and also was a great jumping off point for our research about airplanes and cars (see below.)
Soon we split into two groups. Half the class read and discussed Global Products: Airplanes and the other half did Global Products: Cars. These were extremely complex texts (AR 6.4 and 7.2 respectively) but after reading them together and breaking them apart, many of the students found them fascinating. This group of little engineers loved reading about the history of these two global products as well as the way they are manufactured.
Click the pictures below to see the questions we discussed for each chapter.
Global Economy STEM Challenge
For our next activity, the students had to build a model of an airplane or a car (depending on which book they read in the previous activity.) However, the materials for the challenge had to be purchased. We rearranged the classroom to where various desks represented continents and on each continent there was a natural resource (which was actually recycled materials to build with.) Depending on which continent each student's desk was on, he/she would pay a certain price to buy materials and import them to their own desk in order to build.
The students used the following work pages to plan their design and budget their material purchases.
Check out the final products!
Globalization Website Designs
Then, we designed websites about global connection using Adobe Slate. The students explained globalization in their own words, used other Global Products books (found on Epic) to learn more about other items they commonly use in their lives, and came up with their own ideas for a way to make a global impact. As usual, the students pleasantly surprised me with their above average work on this assignment! Check out their websites!
They also presented their projects to one another.
The students used the following rubric in designing their website.
Lego Robot Factory
Since several of our Global Products books talked about specialization and assembly line production, we did a quick robot assembly line activity as well.