Middle and high school students in Northport Public School will test their ideas in Northport Bay. Students are currently designing and building cardboard boats to answer the driving question, “What boat design maximizes buoyancy?”
On Friday from 11:45 a.m. to 1:45 p.m., student teams will launch their boats in the bay. The competitive goal for the challenge is for one person from each team to ride in and paddle their team’s boat over a specified course in the shortest amount of time. The course runs parallel to the beach adjacent to the Northport Marina.
The competition is part of a collaboration course that all middle and high school students participate in throughout the year. The course is structured around the Gold Standard Project-Based Learning (PBL) framework developed by the Buck Institute for Education. PBL gives students a chance to wrestle with authentic questions and work together collaboratively to find solutions. As they find solutions, they can build the soft skills that employers are looking for such as the ability to work in teams, communication, critical thinking, and the ability to solve problems.
