It’s true every time: give the students raw materials and minimal instructions and they’ll create some really amazing things. We all saw this last week at Land Art Day and I saw it again this afternoon when grades 6-8 gathered for their weekly CAS session.
In the long term our students are focusing on environmental improvements to the school, but today it was all about inquiry learning and exploring the physics of windmills. Armed with only a pile of materials such as recycled bottles, beads, and a glue gun and the guidance of Anja Rohrdanz, the students got work creating model windmills.
Today was about asking big questions and testing answers to those questions. How many blades does a windmill need? How big should those blades be? What angle should they be set at? What materials work best? How might this small project be replicated in the real world?
Four periods and lots of trial and error later, the students had produced a nice variety of models that all spin in the wind. It was a great afternoon of exploration–and hopefully one that inspires the students to greater “green” things in the coming weeks.
