8th Grade ELP

 Students in 8th grade have been working hard on their individual projects.  They have all come a long way since that first week of class.  Student led goals always lead to attentiveness, detail, and love of learning.  Can't wait to see the final presentations and all they they have learned!

        

High School Extended Learning Program

 

A great Challenge Problem for ALL

 

5th Grade Wind Powered Cars

 Students are having great time learning about the power of wind.  Harnessing that power to drive their cars is a big challenge, one that they continue to process and learn about.  Journals are being kept as well as data sheets to monitor their learning and findings.

2023 Math Bee Team

The annual Central Rivers AEA Math Bee has taken place the first week of May for the past seven years.  A team from West Elementary has participated in each of those.  The Math Bee is a competition amongst 6th graders from across Central and Eastern Iowa.  A group of four 6th graders specializing in Math were invited to the State Math Bee once again this year.  The students were selected to represent West Elementary due to their top level of Math scores on the ISASP and MAPS tests the past two years.  This group were among 194 students and 40 different teams from all over the state.  The team did a great job, placing 4th!  This is a huge achievement for these students and an experience they will not soon forget! Congratulations Max, Evan, Elizabeth and Persephanie, you represented the WEST MUSTANGS well!

West Mustangs have done very well at this event each year for the past 8 years, just look at all those TOP 5 places, way to go KIDS!!!

2023- 4th Place

2022- 5th Place

2021- 3rd Place

2020- Canceled

2019- 5th Place

2018- 5th Place

2017- 4th Place

3D Pens

 

Just look at the detail these 6th Graders accomplished with their 3D Pens, AWESOME job students!

Tin-Boat Challenge

 This is probably my favorite challenge  all year long.  Watching these 4th graders learn about buoyancy and then try to duplicate it with a piece of aluminum foil is fun to watch.  The goal of this challenge is for the students to design a boat with a square foot of aluminum foil and six straws.  No tape or connecting products at all can be used.  Then the boat must float 250 pennies.  
Students add pennies to their boats slowly to see if they can make the goal.  All student show growth in their designs, and most complete the goal, some reached over 400 pennies!  A sketch drawing is made first, then they start the building, testing, recreating process know as the Scientific Method.  It is very satisfying to watch these kids learn all about their designs and improve on their thoughts.

Create a flagpole

 This sounds like an easy task, it is just a pole, however the 4th graders that were given this task found out it was harder

than they thought.  Using K'nex engineering kits the kids were tasked to make an operational flagpole to raise the flag.  A proper working pulley system along with a story pole and base were all needed for this project to work.  Again, it seems easy, however many failures turned into two great projects.  Way to stick with it and battle through the obstacles girls!

Paper Bridges

 The look on their faces when the "Paper Bridge Challenge" was given to them was priceless.  250 pieces of paper and tape were the only materials they could use for this challenge.  The goal was to have the bridge hold 80 pounds.  It also had to have real-life attributes to let cars pass above the bridge as well as under the bridge. The minds of the third graders involved with this challenge was very fun to observe.  Every bridge looked very different, and every bridge held at least 50 pounds, some even held over 100 pounds!

Wind Engineers

 Some fifth grade students learned a lot about harnessing the power of the wind to propel their homemade car.  Student had to create a car that was powered by the wind.  Students studied the effects of wind on sailing vessels and incorporated that learning into their cars.  The goal was to travel fifteen feet on the controlled environment course, many even surpassed twenty feet!