DELPHOS, Ohio (WLIO) - Students in Dustin Hesseling's STEM and Robotics class at Delphos St. John's have been busy this past school year, doing all kinds of projects and activities. They capped off the semester by putting together popsicle stick bridges and putting them to the test to see how much weight they could hold.
With the help of some high schoolers, each group tested their bridge until the weight was too much and the bridge snapped in half. While this was a fun activity at the end of the school year, it's also an example of how the class is helping these students learn lessons that they can use as they continue their time in school, including teamwork.
"Right now STEM has got to that point of the figuring out of how things work and usually we put them with multiple kids at a time, with students that are stronger in one aspect of STEM versus ones that aren't," said Hesseling. "We are getting them to the level that they can get their bridges to the next level, and how they can be a STEM leader in the classroom."
The highest weight held by one of this class's bridges was 100 pounds.
The students say that they have been doing all kinds of projects, and told us about some of their favorites and their tricks for making their bridge more stable.
"We've been learning how to make paper airplanes fly really far and then we've been doing bridges, trying to hold the most weight," said Owen Smith, a 6th grader at Delphos St. John's.
"Engineering, testing, modeling and we're just trying to test stuff and just seeing how it works," said Jack Clark, a 6th grader at Delphos St. John's. "We tried to do triangles because it stabilized it better and then we made it like a bridge, it just really stabilized it."
In a few years, these students at St. John's could be part of the new Project Lead the Way, an engineering course where students work with area businesses to develop their capstone project in areas like robotics, 3D printing, and more.
The budding ideas for those higher levels of learning start right here with building popsicle stick bridges.
"These concepts we do in STEM will help lead the way through 3D printing and laser engraving and also other STEM projects to where we have to build multiple things, especially for community help," Hesseling said. "We will have that here in a few years, so as 6th grade moves into 7th and 8th grade and go through different teachers of STEM, they will then come back with me for Project Lead the Way to help out with community involvement."
Project Lead the Way is a nationwide curriculum with several other area schools participating - you can find more information and which schools are involved at the PLTW website.
