Each month, our students have the opportunity to compete in our after-school Engineering Challenge competition.
The goals of the Challenge include providing students an opportunity to:
1) experience authentically and firsthand the process of engineering as they work as engineers to complete a design challenge
2) work as a group to collaborate and communicate to achieve a common goal
3) compete as an academic team in a different type of competition than our yearly science fair, thus expanding the opportunities for students to gain recognition for their accomplishments in science and related STEAM disciplines.
The final challenge of the year was the April “K-Cup Composting Challenge.” In the spirit of Earth Day, the goal was to use some recycled materials to create a device to extract coffee grounds from as many K-Cups as possible in a one-minute time frame. The device had to include a method to puncture the foil top and remove the grounds, but keep the foil separate from the coffee grounds so that the grounds could be added to our school garden composting bin. Students were given 45 minutes to construct an extraction device, and each group had one minute to process as many K-Cups as possible. The group who created a device that processed the most K-Cups in the time frame was named the winner. The results of the K-Cup Composting Challenge are listed below. We will be putting the winning device in the teachers room by the Keurig machine for you to try out, and thank you to everyone who helped us collect K-Cups for the challenge!
Additionally, this was the last challenge of the year. Students who placed in any monthly challenge have accumulated points over the course of the year, and the winners for the 2015-16 Engineering Challenge are:
Thank you to Anna Cotton (Alt Ed Science), Dana Munn (Science), Michael Lavers (Math), and Chris Connors (Art) for working with me as a team to plan and provide these opportunities.