Everest Trek
Teachers: Sara
Petroski-Lewis and Shelby Gauvin
Sixth grade students at Tyngsborough Middle School are participating in the
interdisciplinary activity “Everest Trek” during their Content Seminar and STEM
classes. The funding for this unit was
provided by a generous grant from the Education Foundation for Tyngsborough. “Everest Trek” is a unit in the Building Math
Series created with support from the GE Foundation’s Math Excellence Program to
inspire students to learn by solving engineering challenges on an imagined
adventure to the summit of Mount Everest. The students have been challenged to use the
Engineering Design Process to solve potential problems that they could
encounter while scaling the world’s tallest peak. They have been working collaboratively in
small groups to design a well-insulated coat to keep them warm on their hike,
build and test a ladder bridge to cross perilous crevasses, and create a zip
line to help them quickly descent to base camp.
Each activity encourages the students to apply math knowledge and
concepts, including graphing and solving equations, to their
investigations. The students have been
engaged in each challenge and they have displayed the results of their work as
advertisements, TV news broadcasts, informational pamphlets, and newspaper
articles.
