November 10, 1999

Students use creative inventiveness

By Garret Leiva
Herald editor
       Students can be inventive when it comes to excuses for unfinished school work: the dog ate my reading assignment, mom washed the math problems with the socks, aliens beamed my science book into their spaceship.
      Students can also use their creative inventiveness to solve school work.
      Putting on their thinking caps and safety goggles, 44 third-graders at Blair Elementary School this past week created compound machines as part of an inventive science project. The project tested the function of the inventions as well as problem solving ability.
      "A number of students had these great ideas for inventions and they were going to figure out what problem to solve later," said Carol Danly, a third-grade student teacher. "So they had to backtrack and think like a scientist, where someone gives you a problem then you have to solve it."
      To think more scientifically, students were asked to create an invention portfolio. Points of the portfolio included: identifying a challenge, planning and constructing the invention and finally, testing and evaluating.
      Along with using a #2 pencil to sketch their proposed project, students also answered several project report questions. Students were asked to tell what features they liked about their design and changes they made to their first choice. They were also asked to rate how their project solved the problem on a scale from "oops" to "super".
      While most students were still hammering and drilling away on their projects Friday, a few were ready to put their scientific problem solving to the test.
      "My invention is used to get away from anything that is trying to chase you, like a dog," said Jacob Russell, 8, explaining how his cardboard and wood scooter works.
      "If something gets too close you can turn around and use these Popsicle sticks glued to this hinge to guard your back," he noted.
      Examples of other inventive inventions included a toy dragster, a device to extract library books from a high shelf and a ketchup gun. Some students also assembled a bike donated by Meijer of Traverse City to see first hand how two or more simple machines create a compound machine.
      "The point was that the inventions should have been functional and some of them got the concept but not quite the functionality," Danly said. "But they did have some great inventions."