First graders construct hand with robotics class

WASHOUGAL –Columbia River Gorge Elementary first graders and Jemtegaard Middle School students had the opportunity to dive into engineering when they worked together to construct a moving hand. The students were studying the human body, including skeletal and muscular systems. Jemtegaard Middle School science teacher Greg Lewis’s robotics class helped. “Using paper hands along with string, straws and tape to represent muscles, bones and tendons, older students helped the younger students examine how these systems work together to make a hand move,” Allison McGranahan, a first-grade teacher at Columbia River Gorge Elementary, said in a news release. “It is exciting to see these first-graders looking deeper into the study of a body part,” first-grade teacher Sydney Termini said.