Walchandnagar: Day 1

Written May 20

Today was the first day of outreach activities with the students at Bharat Children’s Academy and Junior College (BCA) in Walchandnagar, and it was a huge success!  We had been told to expect 40, but 75 7th-11th graders showed up at 8:30 am and they all crowded into the main classroom at the beginning of the day.  We arrived at 9 am and jumped right into the outreach activities we had planned.

Introducing the activities

The first activity of the day was a variation of the well-known “Marshmallow Challenge,” which SWE Outreach does frequently with students in the US.  The Marshmallow Challenge is a design activity in which a team of four or five members is given 10 sticks of spaghetti, a yard of string, a yard of tape, and a large marshmallow and are challenged with building the tallest free-standing tower they can in 18 minutes.  We were able to find spaghetti when we shopped for materials in Mumbai, but not marshmallows, so we had to get creative.  Instead of the “Marshmallow Challenge,” the activity became the “Cookie Challenge,” and we used hollow cookies that could be stabbed with the spaghetti instead of marshmallows.  The students were very excited to work in teams and to compete with each other, and the tallest tower was around waist height!

Measuring the towers

The second activity of the day was Propeller-Powered Cars – a more challenging design activity.  The goals of the activity were for the students to design and build a small with a battery, motor, propeller, and a switch to turn the car on and off.  The students were also given brads, cardboard, straws, bottle caps, paper clips, and pieces of foam to design the cars.  The students were again broken into groups of four or five.  They were told to design their car on paper and get it approved before they could actually start building.  One of the challenges of the design was designing the circuit with the battery, motor, brads, and paper clip in series rather than parallel.

The students spent the next few hours building their cars.  In most teams, the initial design didn’t work out and every team went through the iterative process of building, testing, rebuilding, and testing again.  It was good that there were so many SWE ladies around helping out, because there were many building challenges along the way.  Eventually, most teams managed to make a working car.  Their excitement when their cars moved was awesome!  When the build time was up, we had a race.  A few groups had really fast cars and they were very proud of their designs.  When we wrapped up the activities with the students, the principal asked them if they had a good time and if they would come back the next day, they all shouted “YES!” 

In the afternoon, we had a session with several of the secondary education teachers at BCA.  The principal gave us a presentation on the background of BCA, and then we had a discussion with the teachers about the differences between the Indian and US school systems.  The teachers had a lot of fun questions, like how we were punished for bad behavior in primary school and what type of creative projects we did in science and social sciences classes.  We learned a lot from the teachers as well about how Indian students learn.

We spent the rest of the day stripping wires, wrapping battery terminals, and getting ready for the activities the next day.  It was a tiring and really really fun day!  We’re very excited for the other outreach activities we have planned for later in the week and for seeing all the students again tomorrow.

-Rachel

P.S. I haven't added pictures right now because internet is limited, but I promise they are coming in a few days!