LONG MEADOW ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS ENTER INVENTION TOOL CONTEST

Dinallo: “Huge Commitment by Both Students and Parents”

   Six students in grades 2 through 5 at Region 15’s Long Meadow Elementary School have each invented a tool, under the guidance of teacher-advisor Mrs. Dawn Dinallo, for submission into the Craftsman/National Science Teachers Association Young Inventors Awards Program. While the national winners were announced last May and the LMES students did not place, Mrs. Dinallo feels as though all these students are winners.

   “The students and their parents brainstormed for the tool idea,” said Mrs. Dinallo. “The students recognized needs in their own or a loved one’s life and worked to solve those needs with their tools.”

   Some of the tools created for the competition this year by the Region 15 students are a doorbell that is activated by one's foot and a Christmas tree water filler.

   The Young Inventors competition, begun in 1996, challenges students to use creativity and imagination along with science, technology, and mechanical ability to invent or modify a tool. Students must work independently to conceive, design, and build their tool inventions. The tool must perform a practical function, including mend, make life easier or safer in some way, entertain, or solve an everyday problem.

   Dozens of Long Meadow Elementary School students first met in October 2004 to receive information and entry forms for the contest.  By mid-January, the group, now numbered at only six students, submitted their final tool ideas and preliminary diagrams, wrote and typed their Inventor’s Log, and took a photograph of the invention. At their final meeting in February, the students submitted the completed form, Log, finalized diagram of the tool, and a photograph of the student demonstrating the tool.

   “The job of developing the tool and completing the paperwork was a huge commitment by both the students and the parents,” said Mrs. Dinallo, “because it was a project outside of the curriculum and outside of the normal school day. The students came in once or twice a month before school to update me on their progress and provided me with drafts of various parts of the project so I could review them. All other work was completed at home under the guidance of their parents.”

   In 2002, Alison Sapack, a fourth-grader at Long Meadow Elementary School, won first place in her region and grade category for her invention of a No Turn Door Knob Opener. This invention is a lever attached to a doorknob that opens the door with a push of one’s arm. Alison, her parents, and Mrs. Dinallo traveled to Chicago for the awards ceremony, hosted by craftsman and television personality Bob Vila.

   “My background is in chemistry,” said Mrs. Dinallo, “and I have a real passion for science that I want to share with the students. I’m really proud of each and every one of these boys and girls because they’ve worked so hard on their invention.”