Index card structure challenge – Basic Template
• The challenge: Can you build a stable structure using index cards, in order to display a small stuffed
animal (or, hold a bag of beans or pennies)?
• The criteria:
- the structure must be as tall as possible
- it must be freestanding
- it must hold a small stuffed animal (or other objects such as a bag of 20 pennies)
• The constraints:
- you can only use 2 feet of tape, and up to 100 index cards per team
- you will have 5 minutes (adjust as appropriate for grade level, available time) to build
This can be done as a “free build” activity, or extended into a formal lesson with time to discuss each of the steps and
include writing/drawing in science notebooks and/or time for discussion with peers. Ideally this is done in groups of 2-4
students.
For each of the “steps” of the engineering design process, some suggestions:
ASK:
• This is when students are presented with a challenge:
CAN YOU BUILD AN INDEX CARD TOWER TO DISPLAY THE STUFFED ANIMAL?
• In the design process this is where a problem or challenge is identified by an engineer…
(e.g. “how can I make this _____ work better, more efficiently etc?” “How can I make this ____ stronger,
taller, smaller?”)
IMAGINE:
• This is the brainstorming phase
• Independent brainstorming initially
Encourage students to DRAW ideas!
The pictures don’t have to look real, as long as they know what they mean…
• Use questions to prompt thinking:
- What are the constraints and criteria?
- What shapes are good for building?
- What designs might work? What won’t work?
- What kind of base will you use?
- How will you give your structure stability?
PLAN:
• Look at your brainstorm ideas and sketches.
• Which one seems like the best idea to try?
Provide productive discussion prompts for your students. Choosing between ideas and compromising
can be difficult!
• Choose one idea, or synthesize multiple ideas
• How will you begin? How will you accomplish your goal within the constraints given?
CREATE & TEST:
• Build! Then, test. Adapt your building as you go. Measure your structure.
• Does your structure hold (the designated object)?
• What worked? What didn’t?
• Discuss successes and failures with the class –important to discuss the value of failure.
IMPROVE:
• What else could you try or do differently?
• Imagine, plan, and build a new structure, or adapt the structure you already built. Can you improve it?
