Arlington School & Family Magazine March/April 2016 | Page 21

Williams Elementary

Williams Elementary sixth grader Kendra L. prepares to drop her Barbie doll for the bungee jump.
When Williams Elementary sixth-grade teachers wanted to
challenge students with academic projects, they devised a
way for them to complete a different project each week.
And when they started, they had no idea the projects would
involve tossing eggs off the top of the school building or
bungee-jumping Barbie dolls.
Each week a different sixth-grade teacher assigns a project
for the students who research and execute the project.
For the egg drop, students were limited to the use of one
Dixie cup, four balloons and a standard-sized shoebox,
along with an unlimited amount of toothpicks, rubber bands
and drinking straws. If tape was used, it could not hold the
egg in place.
None of the teams used the same strategy in figuring out
velocity and speed, which was the idea.
“We didn’t prompt them in anyway,” sixth-grade teacher
Deanna Davis said. “The idea was for them to seek it
and implement it themselves. They read about it in their
research and watched videos, then made up their minds how

they felt it should work.”
That was the same strategy with the bungee-jumping Barbie
dolls. On the playground, the sixth graders tried to make
the bungee-jumping dolls stop approximately four inches
from the ground before being yanked up by a rubber band.
Students dropped them from monkey bars and trees –
whatever made sense.
If the head of the Barbie hit the ground, or even scraped it a
bit, they had to go back and figure out why.
“They just couldn’t let the Barbie hit the ground first before
coming back up,” said teacher Tyler Palafox, who guided
the students.
Davis said the students are having fun while learning about
completing projects from research to execution with some
readjustments in between.
The next project, with the math teacher, will be just as interesting.
It’s how to become a millionaire. †

March/April 2016 - Arlington School & Family 19