Country Side Elementary

The Introduction

When I poured out all the bags of Lego pieces onto the table and created a pile the size of a television, I quickly realized I should have started sorting and organizing days ahead of time. In all, categorizing 10,000 Legos into piles of the same shapes and then evenly distributing them among the number of groups was around six straight hours and two cases of carpal tunnel syndrome. If anything is gained out of this short paper, please take the following advice: ask for others to help and plan to sort through the Legos over a period of several days to avoid the mistake I made.

The following paper includes the more important points of the Shakes and Quakes program; it is by no means all inclusive of what it takes to plan and complete the program. Although the second visit could take place in the student's classroom, it will be assumed the second visit will be a tour of Newmark as was the case for our project.

Initial Planning

During the preliminary planning stages of the Shakes and Quakes program a leader needs to volunteer or be chosen to head the program. During this time it would be suitable for just one student to plan the coming weeks along with the advice of a faculty advisor. The following are points that need to be addressed during this time:

  • Who will be available to assist during the program?

    • Presentation preparation

    • Material preparation

    • Shake-off Day planning

    • Shake-off Day presentations and tours

    • Shake table operations

    • Lab demonstrations

  • How many classes/students can be accommodated?

  • Which schools should be contacted?

  • What grade levels?

First Visit

A big part of the planning for the first visit comes from communication with the host teacher. There are several points to address:

  • What is the class size?

  • Do any students have special needs?

  • What day and time would be most convenient for them ?

  • Is there space for making a PowerPoint presentation?

  • Are there materials for making a PP presentation? (E.g. projector, computer, etc.)

  • Would there be an overhead projector available for transparencies?

  • Would the students be able to come to Newmark for the second visit and Shake-off? (Try to schedule this day 10 or more class days later)

  • Would there be a time of the day to present when the children might be the most attentive? (e.g. after recess)

  • Are the group packets/handouts ready?

In this semester's case, the Shakes and Quakes program invited a combination fourth and fifth grade class at Countryside Elementary School to be the first to be involved with the program in Champaign-Urbana , Illinois . Our host teacher, Mrs. Kathy Eckstein, was very accommodating and flexible in planning for the program. A recommendation on her part would be to switch schools and classrooms each semester and each year. This would keep the program “new” to students in different schools and give the students in younger grades something to really look forward to. Mrs. Eckstein told me she really enjoyed the first presentation and the program's message was conveyed to the students effectively. The following are some recommendations for the first presentation:

  • Ask the host teacher about what the students have recently been learning. Try to tie part of the presentation in with this material so the kids can quickly relate to the presentation.

  • Start with questions the children would know answers to so they will be more attentive and more interested to the topics being discussed.

  • Put the classroom and school names on the PowerPoint presentation.

  • Make sure to give several students from all over the classroom the opportunity to answer questions.

  • Use transparencies to show how design figures are drawn and how calculations for rent estimates are performed.

  • Do not pass out handouts and other materials until after the presentation so the children can focus on the lecture.

  • Provide students with your contact information in case they have questions. Otherwise, tell the students to direct their questions to their teacher who can pass them on to you.

  • Emphasize to them one of the most important aspects of their involvement in this project is to communicate and work as a team. They need to work issues out in the way they imagine adults in the professional world would. To avoid becoming bogged down in disputes that will delay their building, sometimes they need to just flip a coin to settle the conflict.

  • Make sure they understand that similar to the working world, they must have their design complete before they can begin constructing their building. I would advise the teachers to not give the groups their Lego packets until they can show their initial design.

After the presentation there are several handouts that need to be given to the teacher. Having previously discussed the number of groups ahead of time, all the handouts should be divided into packets to be handed out by the teacher at a later date. These packets include:

  • A paper discussing the Shakes and Quakes program and other points presented.

  • Floor design sheets (~10 per group)

  • Calculation sheets (~2 per group)

At this time a student survey should be handed out to each member of the class to assess what they feel are their best subjects. This survey, to be turned in to the teacher, should be used in combination with the teacher's knowledge of student's past performance in different subjects. This will help divide the children effectively so there won't be groups of all architects, builders, owners, or engineers. Because this may take the teacher some time to reflect on, I recommend the first visit be on a Friday to give the teacher the weekend to divide the students.

Second Visit

Between the time of the first and second visits, most of the work will be on the part of the students in designing and building their structures. The following is what needs to be done on your part:

  • Find and reserve a classroom that can accommodate all of the students plus parents, teachers, and other faculty that might come to watch.

  • Become familiar with projects around Newmark.

  • See what projects can have a visual or hands-on demonstration (especially those related to Earthquake Engineering).

  • Don't go into extensive details about these projects. Instead, provide students with facts that would be interesting to them. (e.g. “This shake-table can hold your entire class and has hydraulic jacks that can deliver three times the force of gravity.”)

  • Obtain guest parking passes from the main office and let the teacher know the number of free parking passes available.

  • Prepare awards for groups for the strongest building, highest rent, and for the building the students will vote on as the best-looking.

  • Prepare the PowerPoint presentation. Here it would be useful to show pictures and provide explanations of projects the students will see as they tour around Newmark shortly after.

  • Alert anyone who may be affected by having a large tour group walk through the building.

  • Check to see if shake table is working properly.

On the day the students arrive, I would advise someone meet them outside Newmark and walk them inside the building to the classroom where they will sit for the presentation. Make sure to stress to them the importance of not touching anything in the building because so many of the experiments are sensitive. This would be a good time to show them the locations of the bathrooms which a few will inevitably have to use. The following is the order of events that took place during Countryside Elementary's visit to Newmark:

  1. PowerPoint presentation detailing Earthquake mitigation and projects around Newmark the children will see during the tour.

  2. Tour of the Smart-Structures Laboratory in the Newmark Basement where the 1/5 scale reaction wall and the shake table were shown.

  3. Tour of the projects in the crane bay.

  4. Group picture by the full-scale reaction wall.

  5. Return to classroom for the shake-off.

  6. With all of the Lego structures displayed, the students were given ballots to choose which group they thought designed the most aesthetically pleasing building.

  7. Each group was allowed to give a three minute presentation about their group and the building they made.

  8. With ten groups, we ran two shake-offs of five buildings each on the portable shake table.

  9. The groups whose buildings lasted the longest for each shake-off were allowed to recheck their structures and then competed in a final shake to determine the overall winner.

  10. After the shake-off, all the children were provided with small presents courtesy of the Mid-America Earthquake Center . This would also be the time when awards would be presented to the winners.

Final Thoughts

Throughout the program and particularly at the conclusion, everyone who was involved (teachers, students, parents, etc) offered a tremendous amount of thanks and appreciation for giving their students the opportunity to take part in the Shakes and Quakes program. One teacher said, “This is an experience these students will remember for the next fifty years.”

I have a few recommendations for future Shakes and Quakes outreach activities for the University of Illinois .

  1. Flat Lego floor bases would be a valuable purchase to help the children when they build their structures. Mrs. Eckstein's students brought in these pieces from home and found them to be very useful.

  2. If the new shake table in the Smart Structures Laboratory could be used it would make the Shake Off much more interesting. The mobile shake table used in this year's Shakes and Quakes program did not perform well and forced us to use its maximum output to break the structures. Although the children seemed to enjoy it, the violent shaking that took place was unreasonable.

  3. Thirty children worked well, but I would not recommend more than forty students to take part in the program at once.

The Shakes and Quakes program was an enormous success and a very rewarding experience for everyone involved.