Students design and test a Rube Goldberg machine that helps new and returning students feel welcome, informed, and supported as the middle school community adjusts to a new building and the addition of sixth grade. Through interviews, observations, and feedback from student ambassadors and feeder-school teachers, teams identify real student needs and create a chain-reaction solution that shares a welcoming message and completes a helpful action. Across nine weeks, students apply force, motion, energy transfer, and the engineering design cycle while practicing collaboration, critique, revision, and reflection. The work culminates in a public fair where visitors interact with the models, leave feedback, and view student video reflections about how the designs respond to community needs.

Students will design, test, and revise a Rube Goldberg machine that uses simple machines, force, motion, collisions, and energy transfer to carry a welcome message and complete a helpful action for new and returning middle school students. They will apply the engineering design cycle by developing criteria and constraints, comparing solutions, using feedback from peers, student ambassadors, and feeder-school teachers, and improving performance through multiple rounds of testing and revision. Students will build understanding of how school transitions affect sixth graders by gathering and organizing community observations, then using that information to create designs that respond to real needs in the new building. They will strengthen communication, collaboration, and self-direction through gallery walks, engineering journals, peer critique, and a final showcase video reflection that explains their learning, design choices, and growth over time.

Students will create weekly prototype builds, engineering journal entries with photos or sketches, and feedback-sorting notes that document strengths, needs, and next steps after each gallery walk. Teams will also produce a tested Rube Goldberg machine that uses simple machines, force, motion, and energy transfer to deliver a welcoming message and complete a helpful action for new and returning students. For the One School, Many Welcomes Fair, they will prepare a hands-on exhibition model with clear visitor directions and a feedback wall. Each student will finish with a short showcase video reflection explaining how the design meets community needs, how feedback shaped revisions, and what they learned about science and teamwork.

Kick off with a “Middle School Welcome Jam” in which teams use everyday materials to build a quick chain reaction that ends with a positive message and one helpful action for a nervous new student entering the new building. Then introduce a “First-Day Rescue Mission” mystery scenario based on real transition concerns gathered from student ambassadors and feeder-school teachers, and have teams create a fast prototype that solves one need in under 20 minutes. Close with a short debrief where students identify what made a design feel welcoming, what failed in the mechanism, and what questions they still have about supporting new and returning students.

Host a One School, Many Welcomes Fair where teams demonstrate their interactive Rube Goldberg machines for incoming sixth graders, student ambassadors, feeder-school teachers, and families. Each machine should complete a welcoming action or reveal a supportive message for navigating the new building, and visitors should be invited to test the chain reaction and leave feedback on a public wall. Students can also display engineering journals, prototype photos, and revision notes to show how community critique shaped their final design. End the event with short video reflection stations where each student explains how the design meets student needs, how the machine uses force, motion, simple machines, and energy transfer, and how the team improved its work over time.