Episode 238: A “Hole-In-One” Championship Kind of STEM Course at Jordan Hills Elementary School

Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. They were asked to take a swing at designing miniature golf courses, and these students showed that concentrating on teamwork pays off.

On this episode of the Supercast, we take you to Jordan Hills Elementary School, where STEM teachers gather groups of students in the gym for a unique lesson. The students were asked to use engineering skills and to work in teams to create challenging mini-golf courses worthy of a hole-in-one. It was a STEM exercise that was educational and a whole lot of fun.

We're here with Susan Smith, one of the STEM specialists at Jordan Hills Elementary, to talk about your inaugural mini-golf course here. It fills the gym. It looks fantastic. It's very colorful. I'm not sure what the fire marshal would say. It's a lot of cardboard and paper.

Susan Smith:
It is. Yes.

Anthony Godfrey:
I think it looks fabulous. And it looks like every single hole has a different theme. Tell me a little bit about how this came to be. As the STEM specialist, of course, you're focused on engineering, math, science, technology, and giving students opportunities to do some real-world sort of work in that area. Tell me all about this project. It looks really cool.

Susan Smith:
Well, for six years, we've been working here as the STEM specialists when the program first started. I have been getting all my ideas off of the internet. We saw this idea several years ago and wanted to try it, but it seemed daunting.

Anthony Godfrey:
And this is the year?

Susan Smith:
This is the year. We decided to really give it a go. We came up with a couple dozen themes, separate themes for each of the classes. None of these classes have the same theme. We all decided they got to pick out of a few of those themes, which ones they wanted their class to do. And so every theme– I mean, there's farm, outer space, RSL soccer.

Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, wow. We're going to take a walk-through. Tell me what are some of the things that you wanted students to take away from this project? What did you want them to learn?

Susan Smith:
The main thing was for them to work together and to cooperate and to collaborate as a class.

Anthony Godfrey:
I love that. Yeah, that's great.

Susan Smith:
It doesn't really matter how well the golf course turned out, although some of them really did turn out well. But no, we really wanted them to learn about collaboration and working together.

Anthony Godfrey:
And how did that turn out?

Susan Smith:
Beautifully. It was awesome. They all just really got excited about it and worked together to come up with all of their different ideas for their individual class course.

Anthony Godfrey:
So is each one a different class? So the whole class worked on the hole.

Susan Smith:
Yes. The whole class made one hole.

Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, wow.

Susan Smith:
Well, the ALPS classes, since they're larger, made two courses.

Anthony Godfrey:
Wow. That looks fantastic. So now, you know, when Arnold Palmer or any of the pros design a course, it's their signature course.

Susan Smith:
Right.

Anthony Godfrey:
So this is like Mrs. So-and-so's signature course for each of these holes. Okay. Well, let's walk through and check it out. I hope I get to play some of them in a minute.

Susan Smith:
Sure. Oh, yeah. You'll have to compete with Mrs. Sanders' class.

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. All right. Well, I'm up for the challenge. Let's give it a try. All right. Let's check out some of these. On the farm. Look at this one. Looks like we have the...you have to go through the barn. I'm glad I don't see any windmills. The windmills tend to stump me.

Susan Smith:
Well...

Anthony Godfrey:
I have a difficult time with those. Oh, wait. There is one.

Susan Smith:
Oh, yes. We do have something that resembles a windmill.

Anthony Godfrey:
And a pyramid. What kind of guidance did you have to give students as a part of this project?

Susan Smith:
Well, we created parameters that they had to follow.

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay.

Susan Smith:
They had to make something that had a distinct fairway. So we taught them some of the words of golf, like the T-mat and fairway. They had to define the edges by putting some sort of a bumper or a fence around it so that it would guide the ball to the hole in the correct direction that they want.

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. Okay.

Susan Smith:
Some of them made false pathways.

Anthony Godfrey:
Oh.

Susan Smith:
Like I think this basketball one that Mr. is...

Anthony Godfrey:
Mr. Pringles, it looks like.

Susan Smith:
So there's a fake hole and a real hole.

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. All right.

Susan Smith:
And they have to decide which one is going to get them there.

Anthony Godfrey:
Nice. This is impressive. This took a ton of work.

Susan Smith:
This is our sixth week.

Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me about the steps that you took them through to prepare to get to this final product.

Susan Smith:
Okay. So we used– we taught them the engineering design process. This is a thing that we've been teaching them all these years. It starts with asking a question. And the question for this activity was, "Can we build a golf course using these materials?" Then we went to the planning stages, the hypothesis, the planning, and we had them write up a design. Everybody got a chance to include their ideas. And then from the plan, we started to create it. We provided them with all of these materials that in fact they have been bringing in and donating from their own houses.

Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah.

Susan Smith:
Like the cardboard tubes.

Anthony Godfrey:
And I see some cereal boxes. Somebody has cocoa puffs in their home frequently. Yes.

Susan Smith:
So from the creation, then we had to go through and test to see if they were going to actually work once they had built some of it. So we would test it, improve it, test it, improve it.

Anthony Godfrey:
I love it.

Susan Smith:
And then finally today is our sixth week. We have the classes coming in during their STEM time to sit and observe the PE class, who is learning about miniature golf.

Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, okay.

Susan Smith:
To come and observe and make some notes and–

Anthony Godfrey:
I love how it overlaps. They're learning to design and create. They're getting to observe all of their hard work paying off.

Susan Smith:

In a real life sort of setting.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah, it's exciting.

Stay with us. When we come back we take to the homemade mini-links to test our putting skills.

Break:
Hello, I'm Sandy Riesgraf, Director of Communications for Jordan School District, and we want to invite you to connect with us. So many exciting things are happening in your child's school, your neighbor's school, in every school here, every day. Don't miss out on following the fun or simply staying informed when there's important information we need to share. Join us at jordandistrict.org, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @jordandistrict. We can't wait to connect.

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay, let's take a look at some of these. So we've got outer space here. We've got on the farm. We've got at the zoo. I love these themes. This is really cool.

Susan Smith:
There's Bug Island here.

Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, let's go to Bug Island. Where's Bug Island?

Susan Smith:
Right over here.

Anthony Godfrey:
Let's walk through. For those who are listening, this is really–this is filling an elementary school gym completely. Bug Island. And everyone signed it. I love that. It is their signature course.

Susan Smith:
Yes.

Anthony Godfrey:
That's perfect.

Susan Smith:
This is Mr. Squire's second-grade class.

Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, wow.

Susan Smith:
Every class signed a sign with their own name so that they know that this is the one that we created.

Anthony Godfrey:
That's awesome.

Susan Smith:
Monkey Jungle is a really good one.

Anthony Godfrey:
Monkey Jungle looks really good. Oh, look at the bananas that were made out of the tissue paper. So if this is where you wrap the tissue paper around the end of a pencil, dip it in glue and stick it on. Okay, so those listening, maybe you can picture that. Then the sides of the track are the paper towel rolls cut down the center and taped and lined up. So let's give it a try. Maybe I'll grab that. Oh, here we go. Here's a club. Blue. I feel like I'm really going to be successful with this.

Susan Smith:
There's the tee.

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay, I set it on the tee. It's intimidating. They've done a good job. All right. Am I banking it? I don't know. I'm trying to use a little geometry myself. Oh, a banana got in the way. This is very appealing, though.

Susan Smith:
Appealing. Oh, I love it.

Anthony Godfrey:
Did I get it in? I did. Almost. Oh, no. I got close, but it's down inside the monkey. All right. It’s inside the monkey's mouth. Not quite. All right. With a little help. Do I get a one-stroke penalty for that? All right. Let's try. Let's see it through here. All right. I think I made it.

Susan Smith:
Did it go in?

Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, that feels good. Yes. Success. All right. Thank you. That's really nice. That's good. Three putting a miniature golf course that should be two. That's about my normal score.

Susan Smith:
That’s your par.

Anthony Godfrey:
So I would say that they've done a very nice job here. We're going to go over to this really colorful one here. I want to check this one out. How's it going, guys? Is this a pretty tough hole to play?

Student:
Kind of.

Anthony Godfrey:
All right. Let's see. Let's see what you got. Let's try it. You're in the rough right now.

Susan Smith:
In the breakdown, after we get back to class, the kids talk about which ones worked well and which ones didn't. This one actually is really hard because of the incline and some of the things just kind of get in the way. But it looks fantastic.

Anthony Godfrey:
And I would think there's a ton for them to learn, even if it's because their hole didn't work very well. You learn something from that just as much as you do if it works well. And you want them to reach for something that's more difficult. If it doesn't work, at least they tried something that stretched them maybe beyond a simpler hole.

Susan Smith:
Yes.

Anthony Godfrey:
We're going to talk with three students from Jordan Hills who helped design some of these. Each of you are in a different grade. Tell me your name and your grade and the theme that your class chose for your hole.

Zikaya:
I'm Zikaya Murray, and we actually did the jungle, which was Monkey Jungle. We did Monkey Jungle.

Anthony Godfrey:
And what grade are you in? You’re sixth grade, right?

Zikaya:
Sixth.

Anthony Godfrey:
So I played that one. I love it. I love the bananas. I think it's a really cool design. It did take me three shots, but I felt pretty good about that. It was in the monkey's mouth after two shots, but I missed the hole.

Zikaya:
A lot of people, you had to hit soft enough, but also hard enough to actually get it into the hole.

Anthony Godfrey:
Did you test it out in a number of times?  And what was your best shot? Did you get a hole in one?

Zikaya:
The best shot was made by, I have to remember, Maddie. She actually made it in two shots right into the hole.

Anthony Godfrey:
So everybody felt good. Maddie can do two. It's ready for prime time. We're ready to have students play on this. What was your favorite part of the process of doing all this over the last few weeks?

Zikaya:
My personal favorite was designing the actual thing.

Anthony Godfrey:
Oh yeah, okay.

Zikaya:
It's like designing the monkey and the bananas and the actual base.

Anthony Godfrey:
So what did the design process look like? Did you draw it out on paper, or what did you do?

Zikaya:
We drew it out on paper. There were five designs we wanted to do. So we were going to do a mountain where it was sort of a river and not which the hole was that had monkeys all over it. Or we were going to do a big giant rock and then it had monkeys all over it. All my class wanted to do was to do the monkeys.

Anthony Godfrey:
So monkeys were going to be involved one way or another. It's a great idea, great execution. And did you try to make it hard or easy, or what were you going for?

Zikaya:
We tried to make it hard with the bananas. So Kaylei came up with the bananas because we wanted to make obstacles. So we would bounce into things. We were trying to make it hard but not too hard. Easy enough that someone could do it but not too easy.

Anthony Godfrey:
Well, putting all those bananas on there must have been a bunch of work.

ZIkaya:
Yeah.

Anthony Godfrey:
Well, thank you very much. It looks fantastic. You guys did great. Now tell me your name in grade.

Dezarae:
My name is Dezarae Lund. I'm in fourth grade.

Anthony Godfrey:
And tell me Dezarae, what was the theme for yours?

Dezarae:
The theme for mine, we called it the Challenging Forest.

Anthony Godfrey:
I really like this. This looks cool. Tell me about it.

Dezarae:
So the Challenging Forest, so we started with that one that has the trees. We started off with the animals. As you can see here, this is a wolf. And over there that's a squirrel on the tree. So we have like these separate ideas of people doing. We had some people doing the big footpaths and some people doing the trees, the covering.

Anthony Godfrey:
I see the footprints now. So you're trying to get the ball along big foot's path right along where those footprints are.

Dezarae:
Yeah, and then we had a group of boys putting the cave, and then two boys that did the bridge. That's the waterfall.

Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me what you learned from the process.

Dezarae:
Kind of what I learned from it is that it's more helpful to have lots of people working in different groups instead of like all together. That sounds helpful.

Anthony Godfrey:
So divide up the labor. Have people get a specific assignment and then bring it all together?

Dezarae:
Yeah, and I really liked how people work together.

Anthony Godfrey:
Sounds awesome.

Dezarae:
I think this was a really fun project and I think we should do it again.

Anthony Godfrey:
Well, it turned out great. Nice job.

Dezarae:
Thank you.

Anthony Godfrey:
Okay, tell me your name and grade.

Benson:
My name is Benson. I'm in third grade.

Anthony Godfrey:
Benson, tell me about this hole. It looks really cool.

Benson:
First, we had to start making ideas for it. And we were starting to think of an idea for a sandcastle like over there. But then we couldn't finish it in enough time because there wasn't that much good materials to use for it. Because cardboard is hard to shape into a sandcastle shape. So then we couldn't make it.

Anthony Godfrey:
But you learned some things when the sandcastle and other parts of it just didn't work out.

Benson:
Yeah.

Anthony Godfrey:
What's your favorite part of making this?

Benson:
My favorite part of making it was probably taping on everything. A lot of it was good. Actually everything.

Anthony Godfrey:
Everything. Everything about it was fun. It looks really cool. And I love the palm trees. There's a little cabana over here it looks like. I wonder if you could play it for me? Show me how it's done.

Benson:
Okay.

Anthony Godfrey:
Now is the ball supposed to go over the bridge?

Benson:
But the ball can go through the bridge.

Anthony Godfrey:
It can. But it doesn't have to.

Benson:
We had to add a lot of obstacles and hurry and we didn't decorate them that much.

Anthony Godfrey:
It still looks great. You've got the half paper towel rolls all along the border so the ball will stay in. Let's see what you got. Oh whoa! You're right in range right there. You just took it right over the bridge. Oh so close. Two good shots. Oh now all those obstacles you were telling me about are getting in the way. Alright, get it in there. It's almost there. There we go. Yes! Nicely done. Well done sir. That looks great. Oh hey and there's a bumper around the hole so once you get past the sunset it goes right in.

Benson:
Otherwise, if you hit it too far it might go out a bit and drop down.

Anthony Godfrey:
You obviously knew that the bumpers were there because you really hit it once you got close to the sunset there.

Benson:
Yes.

Anthony Godfrey:
Well, you hit the ball into the sunset and you made for a very picturesque shot. So well done. That was awesome. Thank you, Benson.

Anthony Godfrey:
You said earlier that this was pretty daunting. Seeing the final product I could see that it was a ton of work.

Susan Smith:
It was.

Anthony Godfrey:
Was it as difficult as you expected it to be?

Susan Smith:
Yes.

Anthony Godfrey:
Are you still glad that you did it?

Susan Smith:
Yes, absolutely.

Anthony Godfrey:
And will you do it again?

Susan Smith:
Maybe in a couple of years.

Anthony Godfrey:
Maybe in a couple of years. You need to kind of reset.

Susan Smith:
We need to reset. We need to refine. My cohort and I need to go back and do the engineering design process ourselves and see where we can improve. We have been collaborating with the children and hearing their opinions about what they thought, and we’ll take some of their opinions and ideas into consideration when we try to do this again in two to three years.

Anthony Godfrey:
Now just for those who may not know exactly how this all works as STEM specialists what you do is you take over class during the week for an hour at a time so that teachers can collaborate.

Susan Smith:
Yes.

Anthony Godfrey:
And have their prep time and that sort of thing. So you get the students how often?

Susan Smith:
Once a week. We get each class once a week for 40 to 45 minutes. And it's also like at that same time the other students in the same grade will be in PE or computers or music or library.

Anthony Godfrey:
I would imagine that that's a 45 minute period that they look forward to every week. It's a nice break in their week. They get to do something different. And I love that you're providing such great projects to teach STEM at a whole different level. At a level that's very meaningful for them.

Susan Smith:
Yes. And really what we're trying to achieve is just having them be able to think differently. Think outside the box. And to work together as teams. Sometimes we have small group activities. Sometimes we have large class old class activities and they do. They love it.

Anthony Godfrey:
Well, thanks for what you do. I think this is awesome. I'm going to play a couple more. Thank you again for everything.

Susan Smith:
Thank you so much for coming.

Anthony Godfrey:
It's my pleasure.

Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Supercast. Remember, education is the most important thing you will do today. We'll see you out there.