from the [ C L A S S R O O M ]
Catapalooza! BY WITT BORUM AND ASHER ROLFE
On April 1 and 2, the Class of 2018 (the 8th grade) participated in Norfolk Academy’s third annual “Catapalooza”—the brain-child of Mr. Asher Rolfe (MS History) and Mr. Witt Borum (MS Math and Science). CATAPALOOZA WAS A TWO-DAY, HANDS-ON, outside the
classroom, cross-curricular, integrated immersion into the topics of siege warfare and the catapult. This year’s iteration included two significant shifts in philosophy from the first two years. First, instead of scripting out the activities, times, locations and movements of the 8th grade, the students were put into groups of three and presented with a packet that included a series of challenges that had to be completed over the two-day event. Part of their objective was to plan and schedule how they would spend their time over the two days to complete their tasks. Second, one of the activities, the spoon-a-pult, was layered with significant elements of design iteration to expose the students to one of the main elements of the real world—failure—and more important, improvement from failure. Catapalooza began with a history presentation about the development and changes in siege warfare through ancient times. Students learned about siege techniques from Mesopotamia that predate the invention of the catapult and
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then saw how the Greeks’ invention of the catapult tipped the power balance to the attacking army in a siege. The presentation featured the Macedonian siege of Tyre and the Roman siege of Jerusalem to tie into the Ancient History curriculum. After the history presentation, students received their list of challenges. Each student group needed to work together to design and build a miniature catapult, explore vertical motion outside on the baseball fields, investigate the effect of wind on the path of a projectile, predict the distance of the official Royster catapult shot, and author a narration of the group’s work in an English activity that incorporated elements of epic poetry. A large part of their challenge was to solve the puzzle presented by a three-person group, and to decide whether to divide and conquer the tasks among the group members, or to put all of their heads together and tackle one obstacle at a time. Out on the baseball fields, students explored vertical motion by measuring a projectile’s initial velocity and by recording the time of flight. Each group used the measured
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