Students show their inventiveness

A classroom of Sisters Elementary School second graders and two fifth grade students from Sisters Middle School entered the Bend Research Inventerprize competition this year and recently received their awards.

Ed LaChapelle, representing Bend Research, visited both schools on Thursday, December 18, to present certificates and prizes.

A team of three boys from the elementary school, Alex Garbrecht, Spencer Bordonaro and James Anderson, were deemed winners with their entry, as was David Novotny, who entered as an individual. The other students in the class earned participation certificates.

Cammie Benson and Adam Novotny were winners from the middle school, and worked as a team on their entry. They were the only entrants from Sisters Middle School, but competed against 180 other fifth graders.

Bend Research, a local pharmaceutical research and development company, has sponsored the competition for 17 years. It is a creative, scientific problem-solving exercise, open to all K-12 students in Central Oregon. This year there were 700 entrants. The task before entrants was to present ways in which to better co-exist with our rivers.

The projects were judged by teachers, and scientists and engineers from Bend Research.

"It's not how slick it looks, it's whether there's some really creative ideas for solving the problem," said LaChapelle, regarding the judging criteria.

Julia Sweeton, a second-grade teacher at the elementary school, has her students enter the competition each year. It becomes part of the science curriculum and stimulates her students by having them think about different problems and ways to solve them.

"It's fun because they get to create," she said.

Another perk for entering as a classroom, she said, is that the class gets a $72 certificate to Barnes & Noble, which she uses to purchase science books.

Each school receives notice of the competition early in the school year and interested students are usually given class time to work on the projects.