Clinton Public School District

Students in Eastside’s 4th grade gifted program ACCENT recently completed the planning, construction and implementation of their very own Rube Goldberg machines.

Led by ACCENT teachers Carley Marett and Antonia Stubbs, the students focused on challenging their thinking skills, communication skills and ultimately, their success skills.

Marett said the main goal for each group was to create a Rube Goldberg machine with at least five movements, but in order to do that, the students needed to first explore and understand the six simple machines–lever, pulley, inclined plane, wedge, screw and the wheel-and-axle.

“We started with learning these six simple machines. We did a scavenger hunt around the school, finding where they were in real life,” Marett said. “We then moved to some stations where they took simple machines and did some small activities with simple machines.”

Marett added that part of the project required these students to not just create a successful outcome but to work together as a team to make adjustments where adjustments were needed in order to be successful.

“They're learning that we don't always get it right the first time and to try and not give up,” adding that these sorts of experiences allow students to learn about determination and persistence.

“While the machine may not work and the machine is a ‘failure,’ they’re not a failure, which I think is really important in this day and age where everybody wants to be perfect and get it right the first time.”

The organizational aspects of the project had students in groups of four where each person was assigned a specific job and task—a data manager, a materials manager, a researcher and a questioner who was the lone individual from the group allowed to pose questions to the two teachers. 

“They had to work together to tell the questioner what they needed in order to get what they needed to fix their machine,” Marett said.

Parents of students participating and a few engineers showed up to observe students and their Rube Goldberg machines and to ask questions about their methods, thought processes and expectations. 

The students are scheduled to visit with a nuclear engineer on Thursday, October 30 to explore the many career pathways within engineering.

Marett said projects like these within the district’s gifted program allow students to have firsthand experience with the challenges and rewards of things not going to plan. 

“Problem solving is a big deal for the future, and these kids have been working on problem solving throughout this unit,” she said “And it gives me hope for the future because the students are constantly saying, ‘Wait, we can do this!’ or “We can try that!’ And I think that's great, because we need to always, as we often say, go back to the drawing board.”