Roller Coasters -Adam

   Rollercoasters

By Adam

In Early January 2017, the class of 5B at Glenridge Elementary, got to do this challenge where you make a roller coaster out of three things Make Do’s, (little screws,saws and screwdrivers meant for cardboard) cardboard and duct tape. The students had to go through the launch cycle shown below. Launch cycle video.

The first step they had to take was make a small idea on what the want to make for the coaster individually. Then the teacher in this case Mrs. Barnes looks at the cards and sorts the kids into groups based on similarities of how they described or drew their rollercoaster.

After that was done Mrs. Barnes told them to completely forget what they drew on that small piece of paper. She said “now you are part of a group and you need to come up with a new plan.” All of the kids were shocked by all of the work that they had done and now they had to FORGET IT!

Next was build time. The teams all had cardboard that they brought in at the beginning when Mrs. Barnes told them that they were building roller coasters out of cardboard. So they gathered up the cardboard and started to create their coaster bit by bit, little by little. By the third day of this the teams all had already started testing and revising the roller coasters to make sure they worked.

After long and hard work of changing,testing, then changing some more… They had all perfected their roller coasters. Then 5B and 5S got to present their roller coasters to the rest of the grade. There were lots of roller coasters to present and all of them were a very big success.