If you have ever wondered how far a marshmallow can travel in the air if catapulted, the seventh grade students at Erwin Middle School have your answers. The students in Mrs. Madison Livengood’s science classes and Mr. Justin Owens’ math classes used their knowledge in these subjects to create catapults to discover this distance.

All students participating in this activity have been placed in Team Guilds with mixed members of all classes on this seventh grade team. So, within a given class students work in pairs, but they get to collaborate with other members in the other classes by “buying" notecards with points earned and leaving notes, hints, designs and ideas they have behind to help their guild be successful as a whole. They voted on who they wanted to work with and are learning to manage their learning groups and their positions within that guild. This has been their first opportunity to join together with more than two members of their guild at the same time to work together.

Leading up to the event, students completed various multi-step proportional problem activities to earn points that they could then spend on resources that would help them build their catapult. Then began the focus on working with percents and as they did so, successful students earned time in class that they could spend building their catapults. Now, students finally competed and demonstrated their understanding of percents and was front loaded with vocabulary for work next week on angles and types of energy.

Seventh grade student, Chloe Tharp, shared her thoughts about the engaging activity. “It (this activity) helped us practice teamwork and helped us earn trust in our teammates.” Seventh grade student, Kayleigh VanDeVelde added, “We had to solve math problems to earn Owen Buck that we used to buy materials tomato our catapults. We had to make sure our problems were correct, so we had to really take our time to solve them.”

We are excited to provide students with opportunities like this, and hope they had learning and laughing with fun and excitement.

Story by Merenda Brady for Erwin Middle School