Woodlawn's new team is going GREEN!

On Friday May 27, the Portland Public School district covered all of the drinking fountains until they could be tested for lead.  Pallets and pallets of bottled water was delivered to each school, hundreds and thousands of plastic bottles.  Over the next two days, concerned staff and parents at Woodlawn came up with a plan to start a recycling program throughout the school to collect, bag, and return the bottles.  Our new green team created an account with the Delta Park BottleDrop Redemption Center, removed the caps for future art projects, and dropped off bag after bag of bottles.  Thank you so much for setting a great example for our students and community!

Mission Possible

Your mission, if you chose to accept it, create a device that can point to the sun.  You will have:

• 4 solar modules
• 1 AC motor
• craft sticks
• glue gun
• work lamp

The Rieke 5th graders were given a challenge to create a solar tracker as a conclusion to our engineering design unit.  Each team had to figure out the correct way to connect the 8 leads from the four solar panels to the motor so that when the left side of the solar 'home' faced the light the motor would turn to the left, when the right side faced the light the motor would spin right, and when the unit was directly facing the light, the motor would stop.  As one student remarked 'my group kept on trying and trying but after the 1,000th time we finally got it.'  The students learned that there is knowledge earned in trying and failing as long as they keep trying.  By the end of the session, each team completed their mission!