For the 6th year in a row, Birchland Park Middle School students built Rube Goldberg machines as part of the Gifted and Talented Program. Kids met after school once a week for three months, taking on engineering challenges. The grand finale was a Rube Goldberg machine, judged by members of our faculty and staff. The goal of the machine was to "make time fly without killing time"; that is, they would make a clock travel without breaking it. All the teams accomplished the task successfully.
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Rube Goldberg was an artist and an engineer who drew cartoons of crazy contraptions. After school, students have been getting together to solve Rube Goldberg Engineering Challenges. Awards are given out for creativity, teamwork, presentation and effectiveness. The team above won last week's creativity award! The team below, won the presentation award. Their enthusiastic presentation complete with costumes was a great success! I have sent letters home to parents of seventh and eighth graders who are eligible for GT pull out this year. There may be a few more letters going home to 7th and 8th graders, once I receive state testing results in a week or two. In a few weeks, I'll begin the process of looking at information for our sixth graders. If you feel that your child is being overlooked, please feel free to email or call.
I also want to suggest that you read an article on my Parents' page about praise. Carol Dweck did a research study that shows that when students are praised for working hard, their achievement tends to increase, but when they are praised for being smart, their achievement actually decreases. |
Ms. Suzanne Barricelli Collins
STEM Teacher at Birchland Park Middle School. Archives
June 2014
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