Upper El has been all about our Science Fair and our Catapult project the last week. That means our classroom has felt like a mix between a craft shop and a library.
Some worked diligently on finalizing their reports, and writing their conclusions, while others cut, glued, and began to assemble their Science Fair boards. On top of that, students also spent time finalizing their catapult designs for our launch day on Thursday.
In between modifications to their catapults, students were welcome to go down to the driveway to test and come back up to make changes. Again, this has given our classroom a unique flow this week. But it's also made things a lot of fun!
On Monday, the Science Fair board fort was erected in the middle of the classroom (see pictures), and it was great to watch the attention to detail and creativity that each student put into their boards. They had a lot of fun in their fort-like creation, playing music while they worked.
Thursday was launch day for our catapults! We had two challenges. One for distance and one for accuracy. For distance, each student was able to have three tries with their catapult. Our winning distance shot a ping-pong ball about fifteen feet!
For our accuracy challenge, I made a dart board out of chalk on the driveway. Each circle had a point value, with the center worth five points. Everyone again got three shots at the target to gain the most points.
As with all our engineering projects, some catapults did better than others. We'll spend some time next week reflecting on this (as we always do) and analyzing what worked and didn't and why a certain design had more success than another. The reflection process is key for engineering.
Also, next week... is our Science Fair! We'll be practicing presenting before the big day and we hope to see you all there!