Seventh-grader, Daniel Frei, has always had an interest in making things.
"I really like to build things because of my dad and my grandfather builds stuff with me," said Frei.
Frei is enrolled in Parker Knuston's Principles of Applied Engineering class, also known as Odyessy, at SFA Middle School in Bryan.
"It's more mathematical and science-based, so its basically a STEM program," Frei said.
The class is a seventh-grade course but goes towards high school credit.
"We have a lot of different projects that we do, but we're always following the same process and that is the engineering design process," Knutson said.
Frei and the rest of Knutson's class are currently in midst of a big project.
"This is called a trebuchet it was used in the medieval times, like, a long time ago," Frei said.
The students are put into teams and are given a problem to research. Each group must design and build their own trebuchet.
"They're kind of in a loop after that," Knutson said. "Redesign and build, redesign and build."
Loads of math and science go into each team's final product.
"They have to actually calculate the distance and the length of their arm that they use for their trebuchet," Knutson said.
This type of learning has students grasping the lessons in a more exciting way. Lessons that will hopefully launch them into success.
"There are some people in Odyessy who don't really like math, but doing this really helps with the encouragement in math, science and engineering," Frei said.
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