Award-Winning Amulet Hits Stands

Wakefield School’s award-winning literary art magazine showcasing the creative efforts of Wakefield’s Lower and Middle Schools is out! It includes works from students in grades Jr-Kindergarten through Eighth Grade.It is designed and produced by a small staff of students under the supervision of a faculty advisor. In choosing pieces for publication, the staff strives to highlight originality in content and expression, and to offer a broad range of genres and subject matter.
Editors this year were juniors Caitlin Wagner and Caroline Kessler.

See this year’s Amulet here.

 

Destination Imagination Team Final Results

From Wakefield’s Destination Imagination Team Manager Amy Re:
“Whew! What an incredible journey these kids have been on! The DI team did extremely well in the international competition, placing them in the top 25, or top third, of the world in BOTH challenges at the HIGH SCHOOL level. This is an incredible accomplishment since 4 out of the 6 members are middle school kids (Rachel, Spencer, Andrew, Murray; high-schoolers Morgan and Finn)! For those of you not familiar with DI, mixed-grade level teams compete at the level of their oldest member, which for our kids was high school even though the majority of the team was middle school. Compound this by the fact that they did TWO engineering challenges and they deserve quite a bit of respect for their accomplishment! Countries that they competed against include China, South Korea, Canada, Brazil, Poland, Qatar, Turkey, Guatemala, and several others, including the good old USA! Well done team!!

Humongous Heroes

The 6th grade Advanced Math class and the 7th grade Pre-Algebra class are working on constructing their Humongous Hero as part of their learning on proportions.
In this project, students were given an enlarged handprint and were required to measure the hand. Then they calculated the height of the “giant” by measuring their own hand and creating a proportion of the length of their hand to their height. They applied this proportion to calculate the height of the giant. They repeated this process to calculate the length of each part of the giant’s body. They then created the giant as a hero with special powers and possessions.

Wakefield’s DI Team Heads To Global Finals

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Wakefield School’s Destination ImagiNation (DI) team is the Virginia State Champion and will compete at the international level in May!
This year’s team consists of two seventh graders, two eighth graders, and two sophomores. The team is led by Wakefield teacher Amy Re.

Destination ImagiNation’s mission is “to be the global leader in teaching the creative process from imagination to innovation.” They create challenging opportunities for students to display their skills by incorporating STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) learning, service learning, and the arts. There are many programs offered by DI including their Challenge Program, Early Learning Program, and Creative Initiatives.

This year’s Wakefield team chose to compete in the Challenge Program taking on two separate challenges — the technical challenge, “Dig In!” and the structural challenge, “The Tension Builds.” Solutions to the challenges must be team-generated and built.
For their first challenge, the team had to build a structure made entirely of wood, glue, and monofilament fishing line, and weighing less than 40 grams. The main focus of the challenge was to design a structure that would yield the highest weight-held ratio (WHR=official weight held in pounds ÷ the structure’s weigh in grams). At the Regional tournament in Front Royal, their structure weighed 22.8 grams and held 342 pounds for a weight-held ratio of 15. At the Virginia State tournament, their structure weighed 22.0 grams and held 417 pounds with a weight-held ratio of 18.85. This is quite an architectural feat when you consider the team is building such lightweight structures (equivalent to the weight of 20 paperclips) that support significant amounts of weight.

In addition to testing the structure, the team was required to present a team-created story in which tension is a threat to stability and is overcome in some way. Likewise, they had to design a technically innovative prop that would be assembled during their 8-minute presentation time. The design of their structure, the creativity of their presentation, and their skills at problem solving put them in first place at both the Regional and State tournaments.

For their second challenge, the team had to design and build equipment to detect objects in their hiding places, take the objects out of their hiding places, and transport the objects across a finish line. The equipment they designed and built uses the fundamental elements of open and closed electric circuitry and open-source electronics prototyping platform to detect, retrieve and transport objects. Likewise, they had to create and present a story about a technology that detects things a human cannot sense without help. The innovation and technical design of their equipment, the creativity of their performance, and their problem-solving skills put them in first place at the Regional tournament and third place at the State tournament.

In addition to these two main challenges, team members compete in instant challenges. In a world with growing cultural connections, increased levels and types of communication, and a new need for real-time teamwork and problem solving, the ability to solve problems quickly is becoming increasingly critical.
As part of the regular DI season, DI teams train to solve Instant Challenges in a very short time frame, usually 4-5 minutes. At tournaments, teams have the opportunity to showcase their problem-solving expertise and it counts as 25 percent of their overall score. When devising solutions for Instant Challenges, teams may show, among other things:
• The ability to assess and use available materials in creative ways.
• A knack for improvisation.
• A collaboration of efforts.
• Their engineering skills.
• A flair for performance.
• Time-management strategies.
• Teamwork.

Wakefield’s DI team has met almost every weekend since the first month of school and has logged well over 200 hours on creating the solution to their Main Challenges and training for Instant Challenges. Because of the level of intensity of the work involved in taking on one challenge, very few teams attempt to take on more than one. It is a testimony to the team’s hard work, creativity, and teamwork that they will represent Wakefield School and the state of Virginia in both challenges at the international championship tournament – Global Finals.
Teams from across the United States and over 45 countries will compete in the Global Finals Tournament at the end of May at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. This team is extremely excited to be able to represent the state of Virginia, their school, and their families at this tournament. Go Fighting Owls!

Read more about Destination Imagination in this study, which shows kids who compete in this event are tops in critical thinking and problem solving.

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Amy Re coaches Wakefield’s Destination ImagiNation team, and is also the learning support teacher for Middle School.

 

 

Keturah Maraska teaches fourth and fifth grade English.