East School students test boat flotation

Students at East School worked on a multi-subject project that tested the floatation capacity of boat they built out of recycled items and household materials.

The lesson encompassed literacy, mathematics and science while fostering collaboration. The objective was for students to understand the concept of buoyancy by designing watercrafts to support a given amount of weight. Douglas Mac Connell’s fourth-graders and Lauren Moriarty’s multi-age inclusion class teamed up for the assignment, which ended with a competition to see how many pennies each vessel could hold before sinking.

The two classes worked together over the course of a week to design and build their boats. They were given mathematics lessons to prepare for the measurement component of the project, which involved application of the area and perimeter formulas to determine which objects would produce successful watercrafts.

In addition, students wrote about the topic, conducted research and deepened their understanding of concepts by asking one another questions and discussing the work at hand. They sharpened their science skills by making use of the scientific method in their writing. The activity also fostered teamwork and collaboration skills. After the boats were completed, it was time to find out whether they would be able to float. Each vessel was submerged in a bucket of water and filled with pennies that students counted one by one. Many proved to be quite durable, holding hundreds of pennies.