The TIIP grant allowed the Science and Mathematics department to embark on one of its most exciting and complex projects at the Road to Success Academy. The students were immersed in the unit of hope, where they focused on ordinary people making extraordinary accomplishments. The academic focus of the thematic unit was the Cold War era and the Science and Mathematics department chose to directly study the Space Race from this period in history. The grant gave our teachers the opportunity to order model rockets for the students and implement algebraic applications of linear equations and the geometric principles of Sine, Cosine, and Tangent as they are applicable to rocketry. The students built their own rockets in groups of three and fired them off on the field.

The angle of the launch pad was calculated at 87 degrees. Therefore when the students used a stop watch to record the seconds it took for the rocket to hit its apex and measured the distance from launch pad to landing with a measuring tape, the groups were able to estimate the height to which their rocket traveled using the geometric formula of Tangent. The students clearly enjoyed this great learning experience and this project’s translated to excellent student efforts on their assessments both in Geometry and Algebra, which were better than what you would expect from a normal high school class bell curve.