Posted: 7:00 a.m.Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014

IN OUR SCHOOLS

Hamilton Career Tech projectbenefits elementary students

ByVivienne Machi

Staff Writer

HAMILTON — 

    Some Hamilton Career Technical Educationseniors have chosen to benefit their school district by creating a box ofalphabet blocks for every first grade classroom in the district.

    And creating a set of 75 dual-face blocksand a box to carry them in for 39 classrooms is no easy feat, say the studentsand their teachers, but when you’re doing it for your younger siblings or for afondly remembered teacher, it makes the job more fun.

    Students in engineering design, carpentry,and art club are each taking responsibility for steps in creating the blocks,which have a letter on one side and a number or math symbol on the other.

Itwas the students that came up with the idea, says CTE engineering designteacher Mike Smith, and it’s the students who are creating and surveying theblocks’ creation from cutting the blocks out of wood, shaping them, designingthe letters, and painting them.

    “Some of the students have siblings infirst grade, and a lot of the students had some of those teachers when theywere that age, so it’s a very personal project for them,” he said.

    Kathy Christen, language arts teacher for Hamilton High School, has twins in first grade,and served as a liaison between Smith and his students and the first gradeteachers.

    “They made a list of how many letters andnumbers were needed for each set, then we put them into a program to coordinatewhich colors to paint them,” he said, explaining how vowels were painted red,for example, so that the students learned to recognize not only the letteritself, but its phonetics.

    “We added plus and minus signs so theycould do math too,” Smith said.

    The carpentry students cut the blocks andsand them down, then use a router table to shape the letters and designs intothe wood. Those designs were created and sent over to the router table byengineering design students via a computer program. They then go back to theengineering students to inspect the blocks for splinters or any mistakes.

    Once the bare blocks have passedsatisfaction levels, they’re ready to be painted, and only after a finalinspection are they deemed ready for delivery.

JustinDawson, 18, is a senior who worked on programming the letter, number, and mathfunction designs for the carpentry students to place onto the blocks, and saidhe wants to bring a set of blocks to a teacher who was helpful to him in hisyounger years.

    Matt Strobl, 18, worked on the sanding andfinishing of the blocks, and plans to present a set to Brookwood Elementary,where he attended back when it was Cleveland Elementary.

     According to Smith, a standard one-sidedletter block would cost about $1.50 each; to purchase similar sets for all ofits classrooms, the district could pay up to $5,800. The students’ project costunder $800.

    He called the project a learningopportunity for the students to see how to stage production and learn the orderof operations, as well as deal with issues during production, while benefitingthe school district.

    “These are real-life scenarios they’relearning to deal with,” he said.

 THUMBS UP FOR THIS GREAT PROJECT