Student Projects and Demonstrations

As we near the end of the 1st semester, I am busy visiting all the classrooms to observe my wonderful teachers.  I see so many exciting things happening.  Here are just a few of the projects and demonstrations I've seen taking place.

The Standard 5 class was studying vehicles in science class.  At the end of the unit, the teacher had them gather materials to design and construct their own simple vehicles.  The vehicle had to carry the weight of at least one Bible.  With copier paper boxes, food boxes, tea boxes, tape, nails, and some tools all the groups were able to create vehicles that successfully carried the weight.  Here are the teams hard at work.

In Standard 3, they were learning about the different body systems.  On the day I visited, they were specifically learning about the cardiovascular system and common diseases that affect the cardiovascular system.  The teacher wanted them to understand clogged arteries, so he had a great demonstration to help them really grasp the concept.

Each group was given two straws (labeled straw A and straw B), petroleum jelly, a thin stick, a pipette, and water.  Straw A remained completely empty.  They filled straw B with petroleum jelly.  Then they filled the pipette with water and squeezed it into straw A to see how "the blood" freely flowed through the "artery", as it should.  Then they filled the pipette with water again and squeezed it into straw B to see that the "blood" was blocked by the "buildup of cholesterol and fatty deposits" in the "artery".  It was clogged!  For the final demonstration, they stuck the thin stick through the petroleum jelly and again squeezed a pipette of water into the straw to see that the "artery" was partially clogged which made the "blood" flow very slowly.  Isn't that great?  That's the type of learning that kids will remember.

Standard 6 is doing a unit on energy - energy sources, energy conversions, and using energy wisely.  I got to join a group of students going around the village to see how we are using energy, whether wastefully or wisely.  Here are some of their findings.

Don't let me fool you into thinking they're always on task and serious.  They're just as goofy and silly as any group of 6th graders.  Sometimes you just have to laugh :)

Teacher In-Service Marshmallow Challenge

At the end of our two-week midterm break, the teachers came back for two days of in-service before the students returned.  Our days were a mixture of team building, training, and classroom work time.  One of my favorite activities from the two days was The Marshmallow Challenge.  This was an activity I'd done with my previous work team, and I thought it was great for teaching teamwork and the value of learning from trials and mistakes.  Each team was given 20 sticks of uncooked spaghetti, 1 meter of tape, 1 meter of string, and 1 marshmallow.  The task as to build the tallest free standing structure that would hold the marshmallow on top in only 18 minutes.  The spaghetti can be broken, the tape and string can be cut, but the marshmallow cannot be altered.  I captured their progress at each 5 minute interval.

At 5 minutes:

Team 1

Team 2

Team 3

Team 4

Team 5

 At 10 minutes:

Team 1

Team 2

Team 4

Team 3

Team 5

 At 15 minutes:

Team 1

Team 2

Team 3

Team 4

Team 5

I got caught up in the excitement in the end and forgot to take final pictures after the 18 minute timer.  But in the end, Team 1 and Team 4 had standing structures that held their marshmallow.  Team 1 was the tallest at about 62 cm and Team 4's was about 57 cm.  With 2 out of 5 teams successful, 40% is actually pretty good.  It's interesting to see the different dynamics, different strategies, and different attempts. 

What does the winning team get?  The bag of remaining marshmallows :)

If you're not familiar with The Marshmallow Challenge, you can learn more about it here: https://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower?language=en

There are some interesting observations and statistics that might surprise you.  Maybe something you'd like to do with a team or group.

All of my teachers wanted to do it again now that they've been through it once.  Maybe we'll do it again at the end of the year and see if there are any improvements.