Our 7th grade Social Studies teacher has an
awesome unit on WWII. His first year in
our school he had kids clamoring for books on the topic. They couldn’t get enough. I told him that I didn’t know what he was
doing, but he needed to keep doing it if it made students want to read
historical fiction. It’s only gotten
better each year he’s been here. This year he decided to include a little more
about Churchill’s Ungentlemanly Warfare – in other words spies.
Like the Native American project earlier this school year he
had students select topics of interest from the era. He included a range of topics like baseball,
the Tuskegee Airmen, The Night Witches, Churchill and of course spies. Students had to complete an informational
piece as well as produce an artifact from the era.
Our planning for the session included a couple of informal
conversations about what he was doing and what he wanted the students to
include. He provided the dates of when
students would be coming down. I knew to
expect them all throughout the day.
Unless they were working as a group, he would only send down a couple at
a time while they created their project in Tinkercad. For some students, this is their first time
using the free online software.
When I introduce Tinkercad to our students I show them how to
manipulate the shapes: change I then have
them find an image of what they want their printed item to look like. Because they are making their objects from
scratch, it helps to print out the image so we can talk about the shapes they
need and how to fit them together. For
those of you familiar with 3D printing, I know it would be much easier for the
students to go into Thingiverse and find an item that has already been created,
but I want them to learn to make their own.
Once we’ve gone through the shapes they start building in
Tinkercad. I generally have them try to
keep the dimensions as close to 4” as possible.
This ensures they can be printed during the school day and that I can
get more than one printed each day.
Students created a range of products such as: secret
compartment keys, spy cameras, medals, goblets, spy cameras, and model
airplanes. The results were pretty
amazing. The students did a fantastic
job planning and creating each item.
