Rising fifth and sixth graders put their inventiveness to the test during an academically gifted summer camp at Mountain View Intermediate School last week.
In previous iterations, they went to various spots in Macon County, such as Cowee School and the Macon County Historical Museum, to learn about local commerce and culture. However, last year’s camp had to be canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In planning this year’s camp, travel was dropped from the itinerary out of concerns that the pandemic would still be a prohibitive factor.
“We didn’t even know what places were going to be open,” said MVI teacher Sara Shook, who has run the AIG summer camp for several years. “The last several years, we’ve traveled all over Macon County, but this year we needed to try something different.”
That something different came in the form of Camp Invention, a program hosted by the National Inventors’ Hall of Fame that provides a curriculum of project-based STEM education to summer camps. For five days, the students at MVI’s camp dug into Camp Invention materials to learn about how science and technology are applied to real inventions. They built miniature sports arenas for games they devised themselves, coded rudimentary robots and used clay to model their ideas for a better video game controller.
“I like the Forza Horizon games, so I added a wheel in the middle of mine for racing,” rising sixth grader Eli Phillips said of his controller prototype.
For students in the camp, the invention activities offered a welcome change of pace. It might be tiresome to go straight from a difficult school year to more standard classes, but Camp Invention turns their lessons into games, making it easier to get invested in STEM.
“You’re not just sitting and writing all day long,” rising sixth grader Tucker McHan said. “You get to work with your hands.”
Even more important than the academic benefits, however, might be the social benefits. Kids spent a lot of time learning in front of a screen this year and lost a lot of time with their friends. During camp, they get to work on collaborative projects and talk to other students in a way that they missed out on for much of the 2020-21 school year. Teacher Meagan Coker thinks it will help the students feel much more comfortable at the school when they return in the fall, especially the rising fifth graders who will be attending MVI for the first time.
“It helps them get used to things around here,” Coker said. “They’re having a lot of fun.”