This activity is a series of engineering tasks. They are told they have crash landed at a deserted island with limited supplies. The students are put into groups of 4-5 and then throughout the year they are given different challenges. The groups are instructed that anything they don’t use in one activity will be carried over into the next one. These activities include…
1) Building a house big enough for a 4inch action figure that withstands a flood from a hurricane.
2) Build a table out of 5 sheets of paper, that can withstand the weight of a reading textbook.
3) Build a zipline carrier that can transport and drop off a stuffed pig. (The zip line is one yarn that everyone uses. So their carrier needs to have a way to be easily placed on the yarn. The teacher uses about 8.5 feet of yarn and attaches it 6 feet up a wall and have it slope down at about a 45 degree angle.)
4) Build a car using mints as tires that can travel down a 45-degree slope. (The slope can be made with a tri-board board taped to the wall or a box)
5) Build a tower that is at least 10 cm tall and can hold a tennis ball.
6) Build a catapult for defense and launch a marshmallow at least 3 inches.
7) The students build a boat with the purpose of seeing how much weight it can hold with a LEGO minifig inside.
8) The students build a boat with the purpose of having it cross a 50 cm tub of water.
9) Having lost their materials in their boat, the buy more from a friendly pirate to make a parachute for their plane escape. They have “$200” to choose materials to build an egg drop device to keep an egg intact.
10) The final activity is to build and test a paper airplane, which with its successful launch represents their leaving the island.
The lesson documents includes a power point in both .pptx format and pdf for reference which was shared with us by the teacher who submitted this lesson.