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Middle school students dive into projects

Seneca Valley Middle School student Peri Gaguzis studied horse physiology for her research project, so she painted Timbit, a 14-year-old Shetland pony, to illustrate the muscle groups on a horse.

JACKSON TWP — Talk about ballet, horse physiology, artificial intelligence, the history of marching bands and nuclear power could be heard around the multipurpose room at Seneca Valley Middle School.

About 140 seventh- and eighth-grade gifted education students presented their yearlong research projects Wednesday night to hundreds of parents and community members.

The projects varied widely, with topics in health, arts, science, engineering, sports, history, and computer programming, among other subjects.

The students set up their presentation boards and exhibited before their peers during the school day. In the evening, the students presented before their family members and others from the community.

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At the beginning of the school year, the gifted education students were tasked with choosing an independent study topic to explore, said Meagan Loewy, eighth grade gifted education teacher. “The idea is they learn better if driven by their own interests,” Loewy said.

Students presented on eating disorders, color blindness, screenwriting, the science of baking, music and herding dogs to name just a few

Ashley Felitsky researched knee injuries after she impacted both of her knees during a gymnastics competition a year ago. She found out some interesting facts about how knee injuries affect the genders differently.

“Girls are more prone to ACL and knee injuries because of the way their hips are aligned with the rest of their bodies,” she said.

Loewy said the students got dedicated time once a week to work on their projects in school. They could research online or in books, but they also were encouraged to interview and connect with experts in the fields in which they were researching, said Zeke Stroupe, who also teaches gifted education students at the middle school.

“Our students take an idea and run with it,” he said. “Letting them do this, they just dive in.”

In addition to research, Loewy said they also talk to their students about presentation skills and how to make a presentation interesting.

“They should try to create something or demonstrate something,” she said.

Dawson Ward made a percussion instrument from PVC pipes after seeing a video on the Blue Man Group, a performing arts percussion group that sometimes uses nontraditional instruments in their performances.

Dawson is also a percussionist and wanted to see if he could build his own instrument.

“I wanted to have something at the end,” he said.

The instrument was played by hitting the top of an open PVC pipe with a mallet made from a rubber flip-flop taped to a drum stick. He didn't have schematic designs for the instrument, so Dawson said he used the “guess and check” method for putting it together.

The longest tube was more than 6-feet and the shortest was about 2-feet, he said. He made mallets from rubber flip-flops and drum sticks to play the instrument.

“I want to learn to play more songs on it,” Dawson said.

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