Hinkletown Mennonite School STEM Project
(Shopping News Photo by Donald Reese)

Walking in the door of the third-grade classroom at Hinkletown Mennonite School (HMS), you would hear “You came at the best time—STEM class!” as her teammate climbs the ladder with the team’s parachute and she prepares the stopwatch to time its flight. What are they doing? They are investigating the variables that affect the “drag” and speed of the parachutes that they have built. It’s part of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) challenge that Hinkletown Mennonite School intermediate students took on this year and it is teaching them not only about parachutes, but also about teamwork and critical thinking.

Third, fourth and fifth grade teachers, Mrs. Renita Denlinger, Mrs. Anette Raiser and Mr. Matthew Moyer collaborate on the annual STEM project, bringing the grades together to build cooperation and community. “This is such an opportunity for students to work across the grade levels,” states Mrs. Denlinger. “Working together is a set of skills that need to be taught. We aren’t born knowing how to do it. This program gives teachers an opportunity to model and teach those skills and gives the students a safe environment to practice them.” Fifth grade student Micah Martin would concur, “It doesn’t matter how old you are, everyone can learn something with this.”

This particular project was chosen through the professional development work of fifth grade teacher Mr. Matthew Moyer in a summer STEM workshop offered by the Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13 and taught by instructors trained at the Museum of Science in Boston. “What caught my eye,” Mr. Moyer shares, “was that [the program] encourages students to think as engineers and it incorporates both math and literacy. It was also designed to be appropriate for the elementary ages. So often STEM programs are designed for older kids.”

This STEM project highlights the focus that Hinkletown Mennonite School puts on hands-on learning and connecting student learning through a variety of instructional styles and techniques. It starts with students researching three variables affecting a parachute: canopy size, canopy material, and line length. Fourth grade student Hannah Martin shared her team’s analysis, “We thought that the big canopy would drop fast, but it actually went slowly.”

Students then design their own parachute, incorporating a greater variety of materials, and requiring the students to take their initial research elements and apply it to the final product. Fourth grade teacher Mrs. Raiser states, “It doesn’t have to be a complex or complicated problem in order for learning to occur. We have realized that giving the students time to analyze and process the results is very important.”

Shown in the photo, from left to right, are Madalyn Ament (grade 5), Isabella Gonzalez (grade 3), Brady Youndt (grade 3), Tahlia Kuhn (grade 4), Alayna Horst (grade 4), Allysen Kalash (grade 5), Hadassah Knowles (grade 5, on the ladder), Micah Martin (grade 5) and Hannah Martin (grade 4). ... See MoreSee Less

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