‘Building a Bridge’ to a Bright Future

Working together, our third-grade students had a blast creating K’NEX bridges. They got hands-on and had loads of fun learning about forces and how bridges are made. Guess what they found out quickly? Triangles make structures super strong!

 

Throughout this process, students participated in designing, building, testing, and improving their bridge designs. In a climactic “Index Card Challenge,” students tested their team’s bridge strength by stacking index card packets onto their bridge until it collapsed. The bridge that held the most index card packets from Mrs. Spadaro’s class was designed by Zoey Atkins, Georgie Harper, Austen He, and Katrin Walsh and held an impressive 72 packets. Team members Alexander Brown, Charlie Lenzner, Clara Shackelton, and Payton Clarkson from Mr. Schofield’s class held an amazing 142  packets on their bridge. This super-fun K’NEX bridge project served as a dynamic platform for our young learners to understand engineering concepts better while encouraging continuous improvement and critical thinking. You can click on this link to get a glimpse into the classroom.