Last week, Grade 7 and 8 students at Langdon School showed off their science creations to residents, friends and family members in the school gym.
Prior to that, they were sharing their ideas with students in Hawaii through Skype.
The Grade 7 class was tasked with creating a board game based on learning heat and temperature, and over the past few weeks they played it with kids living in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
“It was pretty fun because we got to see a whole bunch of different kids,” said student Alecsander Wells, who helped create a game called Hit the Gas in his group.
“We didn’t learn their names but it was awesome connecting with them. We had a blast teaching them. They learned a lot.
“It took about eight weeks to get it all done. It’s nice to showcase our work. We’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.”
During the science show on April 12, the Grade 7s played their games with visitors, while the Grade 8s showed off their engineered designs such as an motorized mini-ferris wheel, a levitating lamp and go kart among many, many others.
Grade 7 teacher Colin MacDonald says connecting with students in a far-off place adds another level of purpose to the projects, and it gives the students a focus on putting in their best effort towards their goal.
“Anything that involves a genuine audience, I find it’s more authentic,” MacDonald said. “If it’s always a teacher as an audience, it’s hard to get them intrinsically motivated. If you have an audience in another place, then I find motivation goes through the roof and the quality of work goes up.
“They’ve played the games over the past couple of months. We learned the Japanese language through a class in Hawaii. Then we played our games through Google Hangouts recently. We plan to play more in the future with other schools.”
MacDonald sees plenty of creativity with the students, and he’s impressed with what they accomplished for the project.
“What is so neat is that we used design processes and the children came up with so many innovative and interesting designs,” MacDonald said. “They really could think on their feet and came up with designs that could synthesize with the singular design. They are so creative. A lot of brilliant young minds.”
