When Students Have to Explain How It Works
AVI in Action | Weeks 3–4: Ramps, Levers, and Learning Through Trial and Error
“If you were perfect, you wouldn’t be able to learn from your mistakes.”
That was Le’Kaiya’s answer when AVI students were asked to imagine what life would be like if everything were perfect. The fourth grader at Vance Elementary wasn’t alone in her thinking. Other students suggested that life would be too easy, that there wouldn’t be any challenges, or that there wouldn’t be much to learn.
It was an interesting conversation to have on presentation day, especially considering what the students had been working on. Over the previous two weeks, they’d been building ramps, experimenting with levers, and trying to connect all of those moving pieces into their growing Rube Goldberg machines.
Anyone who has tried to send a marble down a cardboard track and into a homemade seesaw can probably appreciate the point Le’Kaiya was making.
The Machine Keeps Growing
This fall, students in CAMP’s Alabama Virtual Institute (AVI) are working through a semester-long engineering challenge. Each week introduces another concept or mechanism they can incorporate into their Rube Goldberg machines.
The first week began with small designs and plenty of experimentation. During Week 2, students discovered that getting a chain reaction to accomplish a specific task could be harder than getting the dominoes to fall.
Week 3 introduced ramps, or inclined planes. Students used cardboard tubes, tape, and other available materials to design tracks that could carry different types of balls through turns and changes in elevation. Their challenge included starting the reaction with a falling domino, connecting their new construction to what they’d already learned.
The following week brought levers. Students explored how a seesaw works around a fulcrum and were challenged to create a series of lever-based reactions using ordinary classroom materials.
With every new mechanism came another set of decisions. How steep should the ramp be? Would the ball have enough momentum to reach the next part? Where should the seesaw pivot? And how would everything work once the separate pieces were connected?
Students had to work through those questions with their groups, using the engineering design process to plan, build, test, and improve their ideas.
What Happens When Students Start Asking the Questions?
By Week 4, the presentations were becoming especially interesting.
During one middle school presentation, students walked through their lever design and identified the parts of the mechanism, including the load, effort, and fulcrum. They could describe how their construction was supposed to move and explain the role of the marble in making that happen.
Other groups showed how they’d used cardboard, cups, and other materials to create their own versions of the challenge. Some designs worked more reliably than others. Students talked about adjustments they’d made, including how many attempts it had taken to get things moving.
The conversations between sites were just as interesting as the demonstrations.
Students asked other groups how they came up with their designs, what materials they’d used, and how they’d figured out particular parts of their machines. During one elementary presentation, a group from Stephens Intermediate wanted to know how another group had developed its ideas.
Those questions are becoming a valuable part of the AVI experience.
Earlier in the semester, students were already looking at one another’s work for ideas they could borrow or adapt. Now, with more complicated designs to explain, they have additional reasons to listen closely and ask questions.
For educators and program leaders, these conversations offer a chance to hear how students are making sense of their work. A machine running successfully is exciting to watch. Listening to students explain why it works, or why they think it didn’t, can reveal quite a bit more about their understanding.
Learning to Work Through the Frustration
Of course, explaining a design doesn’t make it any less frustrating when the ball goes in the wrong direction.
AVI educators spent both weeks making room for those feelings. Week 3’s social and emotional learning conversations focused on the value of failure. Week 4 shifted toward managing life’s ups and downs.
The questions were familiar ones. How do you respond when something you’ve worked hard on goes wrong? What helps you calm down when you’re frustrated? What can you learn from an experience that doesn’t turn out the way you hoped?
During the Week 4 presentations, one group acknowledged that completing its project had taken “a lot of times.” The students also admitted they’d been frustrated along the way.
An AVI leader offered a different way to think about the experience: “It’s kind of fun to fail and be like, what do I need to fix?”
There’s an important distinction in that question. The students were allowed to acknowledge that the experience was frustrating, while still being encouraged to look for a possible solution.
CAMP has explored this idea in earlier conversations about productive struggle. Students need challenges they can work through, along with educators who know when to offer guidance and when to give them room to figure something out.
In AVI, students have several opportunities to revisit their work before presenting it. They can test one section, change the placement of a material, compare ideas with their group, and try the reaction again.
They also have educators and peers who recognize the effort involved, even when the result isn’t what anyone expected.
Giving Students Something Worth Figuring Out
One of the things I appreciate about this AVI project is how the weekly challenges build on one another.
Students have a clear task and a set of expectations, but the design is largely theirs to figure out. The materials are familiar and relatively inexpensive. A piece of cardboard might become a ramp, a cup might catch a marble, and popsicle sticks might form part of a lever system.
The instructional planning behind the project gives those materials a purpose.
Students are introduced to engineering concepts, given time to explore possible designs, and expected to test their ideas before sharing them with other sites. Presentation day includes opportunities to demonstrate what they’ve made and talk about the decisions that went into it.
For anyone responsible for planning or evaluating Afterschool programming, that sequence is worth paying attention to. It gives educators several ways to see what students are learning, while giving students meaningful choices about how they approach the challenge.
The work also continues beyond a single session. An idea that didn’t quite work with dominoes may become useful when students start experimenting with ramps. A question about how a ball moves might lead to a better lever design the following week.
Through AVI, CAMP is helping create Afterschool experiences where students can put ideas into practice, learn alongside peers, and develop a better understanding of what they’re capable of figuring out.
Next up are pulleys, which will give students another mechanism to explore and another piece to consider adding to their machines.
By then, they’ll have spent several weeks making plans, testing their ideas, and learning from one another. They’ll have more experience explaining their decisions, too.
And they’ll probably have a few more mistakes to learn from.
Learn More
AVI in Action: Why Starting Small Matters — Follow the first week of AVI’s semester-long Rube Goldberg challenge.
AVI in Action: When a Chain Reaction Has a Job to Do — See how students learned to make their designs accomplish a specific task.
Explore CAMP Programs — Learn more about CAMP’s student programming and educational partnerships.
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