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Edgewood Middle School students were able to test various projects as part of a project-based learning (PBL) unit Thursday.
The unit is based on the book “Almost Astronauts.”
Principal JoElla Hausselman said last year the school did a PBL unit based on “The Boys in the Boat,” which they enjoyed doing. They are planning on doing another PBL unit with that book next year.
This year, Edgewood wanted to do something different and something with rocketry. School administrators looked at books and chose “Almost Astronauts.”
“Almost Astronauts” tells the story of the “Mercury 13” women who paved the way for women in space and aeronautics by challenging the political and social culture behind NASA’s unwritten rule astronauts must be men, according to the American Library Association website.
All of students at Edgewood read the book.
“Then, we thought what kind of science, technology, engineering and math can we incorporate into this unit? And so, we did fun things like astronaut challenges” including obstacle courses, puzzles and trivia, she said.
Then every student built a straw rocket and students learned things about trajectory and the best way to make nozzles and fins.
Hausselman said the teachers learned how to do everything first in order to teach the students.
There were stations set up Thursday for different things, including launching a model rocket and measuring how far the rocket went up. There were stomp rockets, where there were 2-liter bottles that were stomped on and a rocket shot out of PVC piping.
Another station includes shooting an egg up in the air with water and making sure the egg doesn’t crack, said counselor Tammy Adamiec.
Hausselman said another station students were able to participate in during the PBL unit included having a cup attached to a parachute dropped from the school roof while keeping all the water in the cup.
The winning school resource time class won prizes.
Earlier in the week, Hausselman said students had to do presentations and bulletin boards.
The PBL unit took students most of the year to do. Hausselman said students were able to learn about trajectory, aerodynamics, teamwork and redesigning. Students were split up into five different groups in their school resource time, focusing on different challenges.
Thursday, the whole school was involved and celebrated learning.
“Sometimes those last couple of weeks of school can get kind of a long and kids wind up and make bad choices, but if we keep them focused and focus on learning until the very end and you have this big activity to culminate their learning, it is really quite spectacular to watch all the moving pieces,” she said.
Hausselman said she hopes students take pride in their learning and feel they accomplished something.
