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Third Graders Play the Role of Engineers
By Emily Gaines Buchler Photos by John Buettner, Stevenson University
Clustered around lunch tables, teams of students made last-minute tweaks to their cars, constructed weeks earlier in the classroom out of recyclable objects—milk cartons, cotton balls, cereal boxes, plastic water bottles. Each car measured about a foot long and carried a raw egg in its passenger seat. A seatbelt made of rubber bands, duct tape or other materials held the egg in place, hoping to keep it from cracking during the race. The whole contraption weighed no more than 13 ounces.
During the event, teams raced the cars down wooden ramps and received scores in five categories: distance, safety, creativity, overall car and team poster. They worked as teammates from the start and figured out ways to heed everyone’s suggestions.
Explains Laura Piper, a 3rd-grade teacher at Holabird Elementary/Middle School: “I took a back seat and made them work it out together. If their car wasn’t working, they’d go to their teammates.”
Along with teamwork, students picked up concepts in science and math—gravity, speed, force and friction—and gained experience applying these concepts to real-life situations. Adds Ms. Piper: “You can teach science from a textbook forever and ever, but it takes seeing it—and doing something hands-on like the Safe Racer—to get them to see how it relates to everyday life.”
Part of a district-wide initiative to get kids interested in math and science at an early age, the Safe Racer represents “the beginning seeds of a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education,” explains Dawn Shirey, an academic liaison for City Schools. “What's started here may well turn into a career path.”
The following schools participated in the First Annual Safe Racer Competition: Yorkwood Elementary School, Holabird Elementary/Middle School, Woodhome Elementary/Middle School, Hampden Elementary/Middle School, Garrett Heights Elementary/Middle School, Harlem Park Elementary/Middle Schools, Windsor Hills Elementary/Middle School, Arundel Elementary/Middle School and Leith Walk Elementary School. |
On Fri., June 4, as students across Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools) put finishing touches on their end-of-school projects, 3rd graders from nine schools competed in the First Annual Safe Racer Competition, an event organized by City Schools and held in the cafeteria of Baltimore Polytechnic Institute. The competition came after months of combining knowledge in science, technology, math and engineering to design, build and race a miniature car. 
“A big goal of the competition was to keep our egg safe,” explains Armon Harried, a 3rd grader at Leith Walk Elementary School. “We imagined ourselves or one of our parents in a car without a hood, and it was our job to keep the passenger safe.”
For students, working together brought hard-earned lessons. “We spent a lot of days coming up with different ideas and disagreeing, but when we had to get the job done, we got it done and started agreeing,” says Xavier Welch, another 3rd grader at Leith Walk. 
