On Thursday, May 16 fifth grade students from Northwestern Elementary and Springfield Elementary attended a STEM and Careers Day at the high school. Mr. Regan, Mr. Corder, Mr. Honeycutt and Mrs. Herath welcomed about 140 elementary students and teachers to the high school lobby and agriculture department to explore and extend their learning. Both schools had been learning about windmills and groups of students worked together to build model windmills at the elementary schools before arrival. Their main experiment of the day was to test the windmill in the wind tunnel that Mr. Regan set up! There were several models that were successful!

In addition to the windmill experiment, students worked at three other stations in the high school, all of which were operated by high school students. One group worked on team building activities with rubber bands and paper cups. The students needed to work together to stack the cups into various pyramids. At another station, students worked in groups to build a domino run that was based off of a game that one of the high school students coded online. The fifth graders then used the info from the code to play the game with real dominoes!

In the third station, students designed paper airplanes and measured the distance the planes traveled as well as measured the time the planes were aloft! Mr. Corder and his students had plaques made for each pair of students who finished 1st, 2nd and 3rd in each event! The fifth-grade victors from each building were very thrilled to have trophies to take home for their work!

Lastly, the students visited the Ag department where Mr. Honeycutt and his students had grown several varieties of plants from seed. The fifth graders learned a little about the process and planted their own plants to take home! They also learned about the lifecycle of the chicken, got to hold the baby chicks and toured the Sugar Shack.

To wrap up our day, Mr. Lehman, Mr, Nagle and the student council members offered tours and information to the incoming 6th graders! We were led through the building by very knowledgeable student council members who explained a little about the middle school to the students and stopped to explain each classroom in the building. It was really nice for the students to be able to get their feet wet with many of the teachers who stepped out of their middle school classes to say hello and welcome the 6th graders!

The following high school students did a fantastic job with the fifth graders:

Allison Chipley, senior, ran the station with the rubber bands and talked to the students about communication as a two-way street. Allison will be one of our students representing NW at Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science next week.

Dylan Braden and Isaak Parmerter, both seniors, helped with the domino game. Following directions and working as a team were the objectives of this game.

Jonah Hawley, Rob Everhart, Cash Platz, and Josh Schmidt, all seniors, designed and ran the airplane activity.

Seniors Cara Robison and Hunter Moore worked in the greenhouse managing the students with the transplanting and talking to them about the program and the greenhouse.