Science Olympiad Win Illustrates Academic Challenges
BY KAREN BERGER — MIRROR REPORTER
Creating a tennis ball launcher, building a robot and playing with power tools helped Springfield High School students earn a spot in the Ohio Science Olympiad state competition April 12. It’s also an example of how the district continually strives to challenge even the most advanced students, assistant superintendent Kathy Hott said.
“I’m not sure it’s something we’re well known for. We think it’s just something we do,” Hott said, referring to the district’s seamless approach to challenging students starting in kindergarten and following through to the high school.
Working with parents, the district will even go so far as to bus a child during the day to attend higher-level classes in another school, she said.
The Science Olympiad teams in the high school and middle school fit into the district’s philosophy of providing opportunities to grow outside of the core curriculum.
“It’s a chance for students to experiment with careers in areas that we don’t cover in our high school curriculum – like marine biology – while still in high school,” said Jim Schall, high school science teacher and Olympiad team advisor.
Some of the events are knowledge events, where students research information and take a test, while others are building-based, such as building a robot.
To prepare, the high school and middle school teams met almost daily for the past few months, assembling projects or researching information on the Internet.
“We used power tools and just a few Band-Aids,” joked Lesley Galyas, eighth-grade science teacher.
Using Dremels, drills and other tools, Galyas and Jessica Veitch, sixth-grade social studies teacher, coached their Olympiad team on using tools, but the designs were all student-led.
The duo recruited two seventh-grade boys known for their multitude of homemade skateboard ramps, and harnessed that energy into building a ramp to launch a car, for example. Other students used a chart and graphs to track the path of a trajectory, and spent an entire Friday evening pelting tennis balls in the hallway.
High school students Kurt Gillespie, Lennon Mueller and Kyle Ostrander entered the robotics competition, where they received a box of parts, a list of rules and a mission to accomplish.
Gillespie hooked his battery-powered car up to his laptop in order to program time and distance. Mueller used a scooping mechanism to pick up objects. Ostrander reinterpreted the rules – which asked students to use their robots to place objects within a box – by designing his robot to pick up a box and place it over the items.
“That’s thinking outside the box,” Schall said. “It’s amazing some of the stuff they built.”
The “Write It. Do It.” competition involves sending a student into a room to look at an object and write assembly directions. Then another student is given a box of materials and the directions, but no sample, and is expected to recreate the object. The finished product that most closely resembles the original wins.
“It involves a lot of descriptive writing,” said Joe Tita, high school English teacher and Science Olympiad coach.
The high school teams placed third and sixth at the regional competition March 1. Although both would qualify for the April 12 state competition, rules allow only one team from each school to go to state, where over 200 teams and 4,000 students are expected to participate.
“Our teams are fairly young, and yet they are doing a phenomenal job,” Hott said. “I’m impressed with their problem-solving skills, the multiple steps, creative thinking and high-level thinking they have used.”
The existence of the Science Olympiad teams is due to the teachers who spend countless hours after school to work with students, as well as monetary support from businesses and grants from the Springfield Schools Foundation to purchase materials.
Galyas and Veitch hope to recruit adults to share their knowledge of everything from aquariums and cabinet building to manufacturing and engineering.
“This is where kids can see why we’re doing all this – that there’s a future in it,” Galyas said.
Elementary Chess Club A Hit In Springfield Schools
BY KAREN BERGER — MIRROR REPORTER
Springfield’s chess club is just a month old, but already it can claim its first victory. Saturday, a team of eight students from Crissey and Holland placed seventh out of 27 elementary schools participating in the Toledo Public Schools chess tournament.
The team included third-grader Brooke Gault and fifth-graders Mualla Yazici, Charles Maxwell, Slate Stone, Darrian Green, Timmy Alderson, Christian Dawson and Logan Smith.
After playing seven 35-minute games, several students also placed well among the 110 individual participants. Dawson took the fifth-place trophy and Alderson won an eighth-place trophy in the fifth-grade-and-under category.
Trophies or not, the chess club is a reward in itself for the second- through fifth-graders at all Springfield elementary schools.
Brenda Wilson, a gifted education teacher from the Lucas County Educational Service Center, received a grant from the Springfield Schools Foundation to pay for tournament fees and education, while the community and Huntington Learning Center donated 35 chess sets. The support of the schools was just one reason to start the program.
“Chess is such a benefit to the students and I want them to understand that academic challenges can also be fun,” Wilson said. “Creative thinkers can come up with new ways to make moves, and math thinkers can use their math skills.”
Fourth-grader Jordan Dascani said chess is a good way to build strategy.
“I play chess any time I get to. I try to play people who are more experienced than me,” Dascani said.
Alderson said he likes playing adults, especially those who haven’t played chess.
“It’s fun to beat them,” said Alderson, who has played chess regularly for a few years. He also plans to introduce his class to Shogi, a Japanese chess game he learned while visiting his grandparents in Japan.
Chess is required in the curriculum in 30 countries, but not the U.S.
Wilson introduces students to simple moves such as the en passant and the pin each week. She teaches the fourth- and fifth-grade students how to form an upside-down V so someone can come in and checkmate.
Students track their moves on a grid using algebraic notation, Wilson said. Each piece is worth a certain number of points, so players are constantly calculating. Notating moves helps players figure out their mistakes in order to review and correct them the next time.
“They need to learn how to use mathematical language and strategy,” Wilson said.
Chess club members also learn sportsmanship, she added, treating opponents with respect.
“I like being here playing chess with my friends. I help them with their moves and tell them what I would do,” Alderson said.
Funding from the foundation will allow Wilson to organize Chess Night on Thursday, March 20 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Holland Branch Library. The event will include community chess matches, a craft to design individualized chess boards and advice from chess experts.
Students in second through fifth grade are welcome at Holland and Crissey elementary schools. Wilson is trying to find volunteers to organize clubs at Holloway and Dorr.
Wilson was a little surprised at the level of interest the chess club generated.
“I knew they’d be into it, but I didn’t know how enthusiastic they would be,” she said.
Wilson, who learned how to play from her dad when she was 5, enjoys teaching the game and goes online for resources to help her in explaining moves to students.
The club’s next tournament is on Saturday, March 8.