During the first quarter of the 2022-23 school year in Geometry in Construction, Powder Valley High School students built these model houses.

NORTH POWDER — From math class to woodshop, students at Powder Valley High School are putting angles to work through a course called Geometry in Construction.

For the 12 students, their day starts with Matt Richardson and geometry.

On a recent morning, the teacher issued a challenge: “Construct a right triangle.”

With a few snaps of rubber bands against plastic pegs, each student made a right triangle.

“Now construct a congruent right triangle,” Richardson said.

Some more snaps, and the geo boards all displayed two right triangles of the same size and shape.

Then came reflections and rotations before the bell sounded and the students traded rubber bands for wood and nails in the second half of this class in shop with Seth Bingham.

This is the third year Geometry in Construction has been offered at the North Powder school. It started with Blake Jones, who has since retired. Now Richardson teaches the math portion, and Bingham continues the lessons with construction work.

Geometry in Construction was designed, Richardson said, to be problem-based and focus on experiential learning. GIS was developed by a teacher in Loveland, Colorado, to provide a different approach to math while still covering the full curriculum.

“One of our goals is to keep two different paths in math,” Richardson said, “with plenty of opportunity to jump back and forth.”

Students have two choices: a traditional geometry class, or Geometry in Construction.

Sophomore Jaycee Gray chose the latter.

“There’s a lab, and you get to do the building part of it — converting it to scale and using the right angles,” she said.

Jace Arvidson, a junior, said the dual nature of the course appealed to him.

“I mainly did it for the math credit, but I’m not that familiar with construction,” he said. “I can actually work on building stuff, and have experience in construction.”

It is a two-hour course, and the students earn a math credit and a career technical education credit.

In the shop, students spend the first quarter of the school year building a scale model of a house using balsa wood.

“I broke one of the walls twice, but I’m getting there,” Lizandro Rodriguez, a junior, said as he consulted the house plans covered in math equations.

“It’s fun — other than all the glued fingers,” he said.

After completing their model, the students get to work on actual construction.

The first year, Bingham said, the class constructed two buildings. The focus has since shifted to smaller projects completed by groups of two or three students.

“That seemed to get everyone really engaged,” Bingham said.

Last year, the GIS students built four sheds, each with a front door, windows and porch.

Two have already sold — destined to become chicken coops — and one will be featured in the FFA’s Facebook live auction on Nov. 17. (For details, check the page for North Powder Schools — Home of the Badgers.)

The fourth shed is still available for $1,800 — anyone interested can call the school at 541-898-2244 and talk to Bingham.

“People can finish them how they want,” he said.

Proceeds from the sales return to the CTE program.

“We try to sell it close to materials cost and then roll it back into the program,” Bingham said.

This year’s class will build six duck blinds.

“We have a lot of hunters in this group,” Bingham said.