Meaningful Moments: Marshmallow and Spaghetti Architects

Meaningful Moments: Marshmallow and Spaghetti Architects

Activity 5 of 15 in this unit

  • Cool+
  • Primary
  • Year 4
  • Mathematics
  • Measurement
  • ...

Activity summary

Students will work in teams to create a tower out of dry spaghetti strands and marshmallows. They will experiment with angles and shapes to find out which works best in creating the highest towers.

Learning intentions:

Students will...

  • understand that different angles and shapes can be used to provide strength in a built structure.

Success criteria:

Students can...

  • experiment with different angles and shapes when building a structure
  • work collaboratively under pressure.

Activity guides and printables

Activity Instructions

Activity details

Skills

This lesson is designed to build students’ competencies in the following skills:

  • creativity
  • collaboration
  • communication
  • curiosity
  • problem solving
  • social skills

Curriculum Mapping

Australian Curriculum (v9.0) content description: 

Year 4 Maths:

  • Recognise ways of measuring and approximating the perimeter and area of shapes and enclosed spaces, using appropriate formal and informal units (AC9M4M02)

Relevant parts of Year 4 Mathematics achievement standards: Students use scaled instruments and appropriate units to measure length, mass, capacity and temperature. They measure and approximate perimeters and areas. 

NSW Syllabus outcomes: MA3-10MG

General capabilities: Critical and Creative ThinkingNumeracyPersonal and Social Capability

Resources Required

  • Several packets of dried spaghetti (each group will need 15 lengths of spaghetti)
  • Several packets of mini marshmallows (each group will need 30 marshmallows)
  • Table space for the construction of towers

Additional Info

This is a Cool+ lesson.

Level of teacher scaffolding: Low - The teacher will introduce the task and distribute materials at the start of the activity and observe the constructions at the end of the activity.

Related Professional Learning

We don’t have any related professional courses for this lesson at the moment, but we do have heaps of other Cool professional learning here.

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