Playground Project - Grade 7 Science and Math

Project Process:

The entry event for our project was simple - bring the kids to the playground! We gave students a planning booklet and assigned different students to measure different pieces of equipment, measure the perimeter of the playground, take pictures of pieces of equipment, make notes on types of structural components (mass, frame, shell). This was not the easiest thing to do given that it was winter (if we do this again, it might be better to do it in the fall) but it was still a fun day and the snow held off until we finished :)

Back in the classroom we used Google Earth to look at our playground from space and gather the dimensions using the measurement tool on the application. Other students researched different equipment from catalogs that had been donated and recorded dimensions. We found our playground on the designers' website that had each piece of equipment - wish we had known that before we spent literally DAYS trying to find everything, but that's the joy of projects! Live and learn.

When we do projects, we try to give students a voice in addition to helping them develop the competency of knowing how to learn. One way to do this is to have students complete a Group Selection Input Form. They tell us who they would like to work with and, more importantly, why they think they would work well with these students. We encourage them to think about strengths they themselves have as well as those of their classmates and how they might complement each other. As supervising teachers we have the final say, of course, but we spend time looking through what they have said and try to honour as many requests as is reasonable.

Community mentors are an absolute treasure to work with and I am always amazed at how many people are willing to help if you just ask! Our students had several guest speakers as part of this project. We welcomed Jay Silverman from Playworks who talked about regulations and parameters around overall playground design. Jonathan Lay from Genstar Developers, who is a civil engineer, came in to discuss how different materials with stand stresses and how they are tested. Finally, Candy Morningway and Michelle Gosselin from the Summerside Community League to talk about the process behind getting approval and funding for park space in neighbourhoods.

Students had to create a footprint of their playground and place overhead view cutouts of each piece of equipment they planned to use on it so they could plan for fall zones and just overall shape and space. They had to sketch equipment and identify where different internal forces would act on each piece, and then identify a variety of different shapes, angles and bisectors. Finally we were ready to build! We worked with our junior high teaching colleagues to schedule two half days of straight building to help kick-start the students' work. They worked between two classrooms and our Construction shop. It was a bit crazy but also pretty darn awesome to have 95 grade 7s working like crazy around the school. After our two half days, students worked in each science and math class to continue meeting the final requirements for showcase day.

At last the big day arrived! We set up our front entrance way, hallways and Construction shop with all of the model playgrounds that our students had created. We had tours for all of our younger elementary students and what was really neat about this showcase was that it was very tactile. The young kids were encouraged to touch and test and play with the models so we could see if they would withstand forces acting on them. The little ones got to "vote" for their favorite and we welcomed parents, community members and our guest speakers. It was a very lively morning and we were very proud of the work all of our students did!

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