As the academic year comes to a close, we are gratefully taking advantage of the change in seasons, the warmth, and the beautiful weather spring has brought.
Our latest unit in physics was all about energy. Students began the unit with a hands-on balloon car build. Taking into consideration prior concepts we’ve studied (Newton’s Laws and Forces), students created wind-powered cars that we then incorporated into an all-class Rube-Goldberg machine! Students were asked to calculate the initial and final energies in their systems and then determine the energy that dissipated out of the system through friction and/or air resistance.
Students in Geology/Astronomy, which is mostly comprised of seniors, recently completed “legacy projects”. These projects asked students to pick a topic they enjoyed learning about and to expand upon it in their own way. Students then created a related stand-alone lesson or activity that could be utilized next year at The Link School.
Projects included. . .
-Creating a weather station (wind sock, weathervane, thermometer, and barometer)
-Creating a Nature Walk (tree identification, rock identification, GPS use)
-How To Operate Our Telescope (instructional video on how to use Link’s telescope)
-How To See and Taste Success in the Greenhouse (instructional music video)
It was so neat watching the legacy projects come together, as each represented students’ ingenuity, individuality, and a year’s worth of learning.
– Rick Bieterman, Science Teacher