3D Printing Design Brief: Let's Give Them a Medal!

For this project, I focused on history in the second grade.  In second grade, according to the Virginia SOL 2.11, the students learn about some important people from our nation's history:

VA SOL 2.11 The student will identify George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, Helen Keller, Jackie Robinson, and Martin Luther King, Jr., as Americans whose contributions improved the lives of other Americans.

In order to get to know these important people a little better, I created a design brief that would lead them into a research project on one of these people.  After finding five facts about what their person is known for, the students will create a medal of accomplishment in honor of their person.  In the end, the students would present their medals and information about their person in front of the class.  Here is the brief:

It was important to me that the students designed something personally for the 3D printing portion.  After researching different programs, I chose to use Tinkercad.  I chose this program because I found it easy to use and entertaining.  There are tutorials to help the children learn the basics of the program.  I think they would understand how to manipulate their projects with ease after learning the basics.  I also liked that you can use pre-designed 3D objects and import them into Tinkercad.  This made finding the right things, while still designing the project themselves easier.

I created a medal that I would present George Washington with as an example:

Planet Order Sort- a SMART Notebook Activity

This was my first time using SMART Notebook.  After getting to know the program a little, I decided to use the SMART Lab to build my activity.  This is a great tool for creating interactive activities and was very user friendly.

I chose to focus this activity on fourth grade's study of the solar system, specifically focusing on:

VA SOL 4.7 The student will investigate and understand the organization of the solar system. Key
concepts include
a) the planets in the solar system;
b) the order of the planets in the solar system

The activity has the students put the planets in our solar system in order from the sun.  A student will be chosen at random from the hat (an add on in the SMART Lab) and come up to the board.

He or she will drag and drop the names of the planet to the correct places on the right.  If they get it wrong, the planet name will not stick to the box.  If it is correct, it will stay in place and show a green checkmark.

Once all of the planets have been put in order, the game will finish and someone else can have a chance.

This was fun to create.  I think next time I would add a timer to the game so that kids could time themselves while playing and then try to get better at it the next time.  One thing I wish I could do was customize the background of the game.  They had some fun themes to choose from but they weren't space themed.  If there was a customized choice, I would have added a space background with the planets shown in order so that the students could have a visual to go along with the list.