Building Bridges
Learning at LaRue County Schools continues to take strides forward - this time bringing multiple elements of the Hawk Family together around one project third graders at Abraham Lincoln Elementary School (ALES) participated in.
Last Friday the third grade hallway at ALES was filled with students, teachers, administrators, parents, and community members. Tables lined one side of the hallway creating a path for adults to visit and interact with students displaying their recent bridge building projects. Further down the hallway classrooms were arranged to host the same visitors this time with other students showcasing their catapults and trebuchets.
What were the students learning, bringing about all of these constructed projects? Force and motion.
Missy Flanders, a third grade teacher at ALES, described the project outline, “Students learned about force and motion in our classes recently. We wanted to create a way for them to apply their learning to a project and that’s where it all began.”
Several students described their experience and the fun they had building something with the new concepts they had learned. “My favorite part was building the ramp for the bridge. It was a challenge to figure out how to make it stable” said Kaylie Shelton. “We learned a lot about gravity and force. We put braces on the side of the bridge to keep cars from falling off as they drove across it” explained Hadley Huckleby.
Hadley Robbins explained the role of safety she discovered as a high priority in bridge building, “We learned a lot about gravity and force. The braces kept the weight of the cars supported as they traveled across it.” Harbour Powell echoed a similar sentiment in her takeaway from the project, “Bridge are really strong and they need to be safe - they help us get to where we’re going. They serve an important role in helping us everyday.”
The teachers at ALES were not the only teachers leading the lessons. Seniors from LaRue County High School delivered presentations to the classes. Emma Self, Silas Gaddie, & Wyatt Peterson spent time with the students explaining elements of what make bridges strong from their experience in the engineering program they are part of.
LCHS alumnus Biven Turner also visited the classes to share about his experiences climbing and inspecting bridges helping students understand potential weaknesses in their design. Turner, a student at the University of Kentucky, added fuel to the fire for the students’ excitement to make the construction of their projects as good as possible for their showcase of learning last Friday according to Flanders.
Flanders pointed out that the point of this entire project was to develop competencies identified by the community and school leaders in the LaRue County Learner Profile. Specifically, students grew their Collaborative Communication skills and built up their grit as Resilient Problem Solvers.
