Northport K8 sixth graders determine tornado resistance

Northport K-8 sixth grade students in Amanda Sartain’s classes completed a comprehensive unit of study on weather, natural disasters and climate.  Mrs. Sartain, helping students to interact with new knowledge, assisted students by representing new knowledge as a fun and interactive research and engineering design project.  Students researched tornado resistant buildings and built their own tornado reistant building with materials on hand. Students tested the durability of their designs on three different levels using a box fan as a tornado simulator.  Students collected data on each design at each level and then graphed the resulting data.