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Construction Day challenges Lowell students

By Peyton Neely

The Marietta Times

pneely@mariettatimes.com

LOWELL– An egg drop, gardening, pulley systems and paper towers were the focus of activities at Lowell Elementary School Tuesday as the school held its annual Construction Day.

The special event has been a tradition at the school for a decade and is aimed at engaging students in activities that involve science, technology, engineering and math. At the beginning of the day, students work in stations inside the school and rotate until lunch time. After lunch, they move outside.

“This year, we received a grant through the Foundation for Appalachian Ohio,” said first-grade teacher Donna Hibbs. “This helped us buy materials for these activities. I love to see the love of learning throughout the kids. Everyone is so energetic and excited to start the day.”

The egg drop seemed to be everyone’s favorite activity. Groups of multi-aged students took turns dropping an egg bundled in cloth with a parachute attached to slow down the fall from the top of their playground slide.

Fourth-grader Peyton Henniger’s egg broke and he wasn’t happy about it.

“Oh man, we worked hard on that and now it’s broken,” he said. “Oh well, we got to bust an egg.”

Sixth-grader Hannah Pomeroy worked with Henniger on his parachute. She said Construction Day is fun because she enjoys teaching the younger students how to do things.

“This is better than sitting in a classroom and learning because I get to be the teacher now,” she said.

Hayden Hall, 7, watched sixth-grader Megan Stone work on cloth padding for their egg.

“I like building stuff and figuring things out,” said Stone.

“I learned the difference between weeds and plants today and also learned how hard it is to keep an egg from breaking, like every year.”

Mason Weckbacher, 10, said he enjoys the egg drop because the slide they drop it from is taller than the school.

“It’s really hard to keep it from breaking but every year I look forward to this,” he said.

At a glance

¯STEM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific areas.

¯These areas are science, technology, engineering and math.

¯Only 16 percent of high school students say they are interested in a STEM career and have proven a proficiency in mathematics.

¯Nearly 28 percent of high school freshmen declare an interest in a STEM-related field.

Source: U.S. Department of Education.

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