The Brooklyn Bridge: Literature, Research and Collaboration

Over the course of several weeks the second grade classes embarked on a design project inspired by the studies they had been doing in their classes about the late-1800s and the book Twenty-One Elephants and Still Standing by April Jones Prince. In their classrooms students were spending time learning about the different aspects of life in the late 1800s including innovations, social justice and literature. In the library we read the book Twenty-One Elephants and Still Standing about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. The book shares the story of the bridge and the fear people had at the time of the suspension bridge. PT Barnum, the great showman, arranged a stunt to prove the bridge was sturdy. He walked 21 elephants from his circus show across the bridge from Manhattan to Brooklyn to prove to people that the bridge was safe. Students read the story and reflected on what they learned about the bridge and connections to what they had learned about that time period.

Next, students engaged in the See/Think/Wonder thinking routine (Project Zero Making Thinking Visible: Thinking Routines https://tinyurl.com/l7kwhbm). As a class, students shared what they saw in the book including pictures and the story, what they thought about what they saw in the book and what they wondered about. The next step was to look at archived images from the New York Public Library Digital Collections. The pictures and drawings were from the building of the bridge. The images were posted around the library. Students spent time in small groups looking at each of the images and using the See/Think/Wonder thinking routine. The wonder questions from both of these thinking routine sessions became the foundation for our research into how the Brooklyn Bridge was built and how suspension bridges work.

The next step was to learn more about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. Students learned about how the bridge was built on caissons. We learned about how the workers went into the caissons to level out the mud. They also learned about how many workers became sick with decompression sickness, including one of the engineers designing the bridge. Students learned that laws were passed after the building of the Brooklyn Bridge to protect the workers that were working in these dangerous conditions. Students all learned how the towers were built and the cables connected on the bridge to make the suspension bridge stable. We used Google Earth to explore the Brooklyn Bridge as well as the Golden Gate Bridge and noticed details of suspension bridges.

The final step was for students to work in small groups to design and built their own bridge inspired by what they learned about suspension bridges. They had to design bridges that could hold 21 small plastic elephants. Students were given a variety of materials to build with including cardboard, plastic cups, yarn, popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners and more. Students had to design, built, compromise with others, and rework/redesign to come up with a suspension bridge to hold the elephants. Students did a great job applying what they learned about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and created new bridge designs. Student groups collaborated to design, prototype, test and rework their bridges designs throughout the project. They were creative with the use of the materials and how they utilized them to create their bridges.  With this project students continued to make connections with the literature they are reading, the history they are learning about as well developing their communication and collaboration skills!