This year in STEM you will explore living things, materials, forces and light, code a game and a micro:bit, and build things that really work. Every lesson starts with a question or a problem.
Here is today's problem. You must send a spoken message from one end of your table to the other. The listener must not read your lips. You only have two paper cups and a length of string.
Hands up: what is your first idea?
In your group, talk for one minute.
- How might the cups and the string help?
- What could go wrong?
- What will you try first?
Be ready to say one idea out loud.
Each group has the same kit: two paper cups and about two metres of string.
- Make a set-up that sends a quiet spoken message across your table.
- The listener must face away so they cannot read lips. Notice what helps and what does not.
- Then change only one thing (how tight the string is, how you hold the cup, or how loud you speak), test again, and compare.
When the message comes through clearly, freeze that set-up. Be ready to show the class.
Three groups will show their working set-up while it is still live.
- Show how you held the cups and the string.
- Send one short word while the listener faces away.
- Say the one idea that made it work, and one thing you changed to improve it.
Everyone else: watch the string. Is it slack or tight when the word comes through?
The idea that made the difference:
A tight path for the wobble. Speaking makes the cup base wobble. A string pulled straight and firm carries that wobble to the other cup. A slack string cannot.
STEM is using science, technology, engineering and maths thinking together to solve a real problem with the kit you have: exactly what your group just did.
Was the string a hollow tube the voice ran through?
On your Investigation Journal page, fill in the Our set-ups table:
- First try: what you did, whether the message got through, and what you noticed.
- Second try: the one thing you changed, and what happened.
- Best set-up: in the box under the table, draw the set-up that worked best. Label the cups, the string, and where you held each cup.
Then answer the question under your drawing: why do you think that set-up worked best?
Leave the Marconi question and the I wonder question at the bottom of the page for later in the lesson.
Your group sent a message along a string. Over a hundred years ago, people in the west of Ireland sent messages much farther, with no string and no wire under the sea.
Three things to hold onto:
- The problem before: a message to America went by ship or along a cable under the sea. Both were slow or costly.
- What Clifden did: in 1907, Guglielmo Marconi's station at Clifden in Connemara sent messages across the Atlantic through the air.
- What changed: news travelled faster, and people on shore could reach ships at sea.
Talk about the questions below in your group, then write your answer to the Marconi question on your Investigation Journal page.
STEM this year starts with questions worth chasing.
As a group, agree one I wonder question. It can grow from today's work (messages, the wobble, the cups and string, how people share news) or look ahead to living things, materials, or how something around us works.
Start it with I wonder how…, I wonder why… or I wonder what would happen if…
Write it on a slip and pin it to the class noticeboard. Then write your own I wonder question at the bottom of your Investigation Journal page.
What one idea made your cup message work?
That was a sample lesson from STE for 4th Class
Every lesson in the course is ready to teach like this one. See what else comes with it, and how to order it.
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