Bond Grade 5 Students Creating Dream Bridges

March 26th, 2021

After four weeks for Bond Grade 5 students designing and creating, their own bridges displayed at the Front Foyer of school building in the last week of March. All kinds of bridges were built with popsicle sticks, boxes, and other recycling materials. The exhibition has surprised all visitors. The students’ creativities and science thinking in the project left a deep impression to all teachers and students.

In Bond's classroom, science is more interesting than you thought. This is an experiential learning opportunity for students, which they can learn forces in a regular science course and have an opportunity to explore the field of STEM at the same time, which Ms. Ameree introduced a Bridge project to Bond's Grade 5 science course. 

Students had four weeks to design and create their own bridges. All bridges were made of recycling materials. Prior to displaying bridges on campus, all bridges had to be tested by a strong wind from a fan, which simulated extreme conditions, such as hurricanes, tornados, and earthquakes. Forces, structures, and impacts, all physical concepts relating to bridges, will be applied in the processing of building a bridge.

"Students had four weeks to design and create their own bridges in class or at home. I don't want them to buy anything new for this project, so they were asked to use popsicle sticks, boxes, and other recycling materials. "Ms. Ameree said. This project is also interdisciplinary, in which students can have a chance to make things like engineers and learn some concepts of environment for a future unit.

It is not merely a piece of paper or wood artwork. During the processing of building bridges, Ms. Ameree evaluated whether students were able to apply the concepts they learned and use terminologies to explain things correctly. Whether students used tools to measure and create bridges correctly was observed at the same time. There were clear rubrics to assess how students learn in this Bridge project. This is a great opportunity for students to learn science by doing it.