6th Grade Egg Drop

Nueva Stories

Dice and Randomness

Every now and then we post interesting stories about Nueva and its alums, stories that show some essential quality of Nueva students and education. If you have one, please email it to Matt.

Prior to a freshman World Religions oral exam with twelve potential questions, the teacher informed the class that the students would only need to answer five of the twelve questions, and that he, the teacher, would select the five questions randomly on the day of the test using a pair of dice.

Most of the students, simmering in a late spring stupor, were prepared to blithely follow these instructions. But one Nueva graduate's hand popped up.

"Excuse me Mr. Brown, this method will not result in random questions. We won't need to study question 1 at all, because it will not occur in a pair of dice, and we would concentrate our studies on question 7, as its probability of occurring is the highest.

"I have a 12-sided die at home and can bring it in if that would be of help to you."

Always thinking, speaking up and engaging in class, thinking mathematically, more interested in learning than in finding the easy way, and, of course, using those SEL skills to be helpful rather than confrontational -- several of the hallmarks of Nueva students.

Nueva Stories

6th Grade Egg Drop

Written by Kim Saxe

Integrated Subject: Science

For many years Pote Pothongsunan, our new 6th grade Science teacher, has had his students do an egg drop design challenge with a twist. They could only use a deck of cards and a stapler.

Cards were everywhere as students began experimenting with different ways to create a way to move a raw egg from the balcony of the J building to the ground without cracking it.

“We can only use cards and a stapler?” one asked in disbelief.

“Yes, that’s right,” replied Pote.

“Can we use the stapler as part of our invention?” asked a clever, out-of-the-box thinker.

I was delighted and couldn’t resist noting, “That is great thinking! What you’re doing is really important. You are testing the constraints of a design challenge. Designers do that.”

The students went through several prototyping sessions, enhancing their designs each time. Pote uses this unit as an introductory experience to his science unit on Forces. During the final egg drops, Pote videoed the different students’ work for the class to analyze later on.

Students not only learned a great deal about forces and impact. They practiced many of the steps of the Design Thinking process, including generating ideas, creating both idea sketches and final engineering drawings, and using the iterative prototyping and testing cycle.

Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, The Nueva School is a nationally recognized independent school serving gifted students and emphasizing integrated studies, creative arts, and social-emotional learning. For more than 40 years, Nueva has remained committed to its original vision: to inspire a passion for lifelong learning, foster social and emotional acuity, and develop a child's imaginative mind. Nueva creates a dynamic educational model to enable gifted children to learn how to make choices that will benefit the world.