Copycat STEM Challenges - A Different Way to Do STEM

At the start of each school year, doing STEM challenges is something that is new to many of my students.  Many of the kids are hesitant to try their ideas for fear of failure.  

Doing some COPYCAT challenges at the beginning of the year can help kids figure out ways to do STEM challenges!  This idea could be done with most existing STEM challenges.  Kids COPY something the teacher or other students have done.

Copying is not as easy as it seems.  There are a few Copycat STEM Challenges in my tpt store as well as my blog store, but you can do this with STEM challenges you already have in your classroom as well.

We start the year with some of the more basic STEM challenges, like cup towers.  You can use as many cups as your want for your challenge.  We use 20 cups per pair of students for this one most of the time.  I also try to stack the cups in unique ways so students can see some unusual ways to build a cup tower.

For these copycat STEM challenges, you just need to build a paper cup tower BEFORE the challenge.  Students need to COPY your design.  This gives students the opportunity to be successful and to see different ways to build a cup tower.  

Why not start the school year with a copycat challenge or two?  These are also great to use throughout the year, especially when students are really struggling to figure out a STEM challenge.  Click here to see the challenge in my tpt store.

What can your students learn from a copycat STEM challenge?