This is a full, hour-long classroom activity that is meant to encourage re-thinking success and failure. Students in pairs are tasked to build a rocket out of found materials that they know will fail when launched. After about 20 minutes of building, test the rockets in front of the whole class. It’s an opportunity to make failing fun or silly with the students as they see how badly each rocket fails.
Then, in their building pairs, ask students to consider how they know that their design would fail. Why did they choose to make it fail in this way? What concepts might it have connected to? Weight, even flight path, distance traveled? This is a good opportunity to have students write in their notebooks, if they are incorporated.
Finally, draw students back together as a full group and debrief. Talk with students about how failure is easy. “There are so many different ways to not succeed, right? It can make it seem like there’s only one way to succeed. But that’s not what engineering says! Engineering says that there may be a goal in mind, a problem to solve, but that there are so many ways to solve it! This is called Solution Diversity. It means there’s many ways to succeed. Still, there are many ways to not succeed, but with engineering, those aren’t failures. They’re steps towards success. So, let’s think about ways to re-frame this activity as a step towards success, rather than purposefully failing. Raise hands, tell me what you learned about rockets through this activity that would help you build a rocket that ‘succeeded’ next time?
Extension on this activity: The next class, ask students to build a design that succeeds. Debrief criteria for success. Success can be measured in many ways, so it’s important to consider all of those ways when evaluating your success.
STOMP Notebooks 