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
Just look at the detail these 6th Graders accomplished with their 3D Pens, AWESOME job students!
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.
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!
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!
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!
The Noetic Math Challenge is an activity that students participate in two times a year here at West Elementary. This Mathematical challenge is used all over the United States; it includes over 26,000 of the top math students over 533 schools and 43 states. Our kids did an excellent job this year and over half of them earned the National Honorable Mention Ribbons. This is given to students that place in the top 50% of all the students taking the test. GREAT JOB everyone, especially Jacob, Dexter, Memphis and Enman who were the class winners at West Elementary.
Students have developed some machines using gears and electric engines to mimic real world machines. The productive struggle was tough at times for these mini-engineers, but when things lined up and their machines took off, it was all worth it!
