GOOD HOPE, Ala. – This week, the seventh-grade classes at Good Hope Middle School took turns creating patterns on 225 Rubik’s Cubes and arranging them to create a mosaic portrait of President Abraham Lincoln. School Librarian Stephanie Hood secured the cubes and got the project rolling.
Hood told The Tribune, “I just happened to come across this-I guess it was on Facebook I saw about it or something-and it’s called the Rubik’s Cube Lending Program. They let me borrow these for six weeks, and I just have to pay to send them back, so I get to use them for free, basically. You can borrow up to 600, and I got 400 this time. I have 400 cubes in there, and it’s a lot to keep up with!”
The image came from a template available through the lending program’s website.
Hood said, “You go on their website and you download it. And you divide the kids up in groups, and each group has their specific patterns that they have to make. Then, when each group gets theirs done, we bring it to the table and put them all together, and it makes that mosaic.”
How did the kids take to the project?
Hood responded, “Some of them love it. I mean, it takes a lot of problem-solving and critical-thinking skills, and things like that. Some of them are more energetic about that than others!”
According to the librarian, certain students, especially many of those who seem to struggle with traditional classroom approaches, seemed to thrive with the hands-on challenge.
Said Hood, “It builds their confidence, too. I mean, you would not believe how proud they were when they got their part done and they brought it over to me.”
Good Hope’s sixth- and eighth-grade classes have also done cube projects, and the eighth graders may get a shot at something even bigger before the cubes go back. Hood told The Tribune that the eighth grade may attempt a mosaic with the whole 400 cube set.
Hood said of her students, “I’m very proud of the kids. They help each other-it’s a lot of cooperative learning-and they seem to really be enjoying helping each other. I’m proud of them for that and just perseverance, just trying and keeping on and not giving up. These middle school kids, really, that builds their confidence when something like this happens, and they were so excited to see it when it was finished.
“I’m proud of them for not giving up, because they could have. The Rubik’s Cube isn’t as popular now, maybe, as it was when I was a kid, so they don’t have as much experience with it. They wanted to know how to do it, so I was proud of that. They’re good kids.”
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