For the past few weeks, students at Pea Ridge Middle School have been working on a project in STEM (Science, technology, engineering and math) called the Cardboard Arcade. They were assigned partners and they worked together to make an original arcade game using cardboard.
Students were directed by teachers Quentin Snoderly and Amber King, who teach sixth- through eighth-grade STEM classes at the Middle School.
On Oct. 5, students from the Pea Ridge Primary School visited the Middle School and played the games the elder students had made. They went around the cafeteria, which is where the students set up the projects, played the games and earned tickets. After they earned a certain amount of tickets, they could trade in their tickets for a prize. There were different amounts of tickets assigned to different prizes.
The students learned many things through this project.
They learned to problem solve, to be creative, to work together and to brainstorm. They each thought of their own creative ideas to build their own projects and if something didn't work out, they used problem solving to fix that problem. They worked together with a partner with whom they may or may not have been familiar and still came up with great ideas. Each idea was very creative because they had to come up with their own game and not use a game that was already in an arcade.
Mr. Snoderly said he is looking forward to doing this project next year.
"Students seemed to really enjoy it," he said. "The Primary (students) were engaged, had fun and really lied playing the games."
Community on 10/18/2017