Fifth and eighth-grade MERIT students recently had the opportunity to collaborate on an electromagnetism lesson. Fifth-grade students had recently learned about how electromagnets use electricity to create a magnetic field. Each of the fifth-graders had the opportunity to then teach an eighth-grader what they learned as the eighth graders have been learning about how electrical and magnetic fields interact.

Eighth graders recently studied how different power plants transform various forms of energy into electricity; most using a magnet spinning in a coil of wire to generate electricity. The eighth-grade students then shared that lesson with the fifth graders and all students discussed how humans harness electricity. Students used this information to build a telegraph and send messages to each other across the media center using the concept of electromagnetism. A telegraph uses an electromagnet to “tap” out the message using Morse code.

Eighth-grader Kristina Bristow-Kennedy said about the experience, “I thought it was interesting because we got to teach fifth-graders and then they got to teach us. It was cool how we got to communicate across the library without talking and had to figure out the message that was in code.”