MONROE — It’s the time of year when it takes a creative twist in the school year-plot to keep even the most engaged students learning until the final bell sounds on Wednesday, June 3.
But on a breezy early summer day Thursday, Monroe Middle School students at three age levels got out of their classrooms and worked with each other on new projects to end the old school year. The youngest MMS students, the sixth graders, engaged in a “survivor challenge” project that, like the real world, involves getting along and contributing to a common goal with people you didn’t necessarily team up with on your own.
The intrepid sixth graders, for example, would try to build slingshots made of coconuts using tennis balls, among other endeavors.
Seventh-graders, meanwhile, were working closely in groups on the contours and layout of a mini golf course as part of “Mini Golf Madness,” under the direction of MMS teacher Heather Peterson. Using both indoors and out for the multi-day, school-wide event, all of the projects teach vital, so-called STEM skills in practical and fun ways, in addition to the softer learning on how to operate in a group, school officials said.
“We’re trying to build something that floats, but not necessarily a boat,” said Max Tran, an eighth grader who was holding a cardboard template for a boat hull of sorts in the sprawling gym Thursday.
And the best part? The groups were intentionally chosen at random — a lot like life, according to officials. Still, you couldn’t tell that by the interactions of the student groups with each other; and the other fast-forming groups pushing for the same winning goal. Laughter echoed off the walls, as music played in the background.
For eighth graders during the first of three days of work — right up until the last day of school next Wednesday — there was clearly a spirit of a school year about to end in the hallways and on the gym floor. But there were also plenty of life lessons around brainstorming ideas, and launching a boat to win the upcoming MMS competition.
That’s according Meaghan McGuire, 7th/8th Grade Science teacher at MMS who specialized in the eighth grade boat-building competition. Piles of cardboard, empty milk jugs and pool noodles became the raw materials for future success in the warm gym.
Meanwhile, with regard to the boat-building, Tran said he had been chosen to by his group to pilot the craft. Of slender build, Tran though, said his light weight wasn’t the key driver for his nomination but rather his ability to paddle quickly — a small lesson in power-to weight-ratios and what it takes to make it buoyant enough, long enough, to win.
He’ll find out in the water-based culmination of that contest next week at the pool.
“It’s just a great way for the kids and staff to end the school year,” said McGuire.
