Third- and fourth-graders at Leverett Elementary School in Fayetteville livened up Dead Day on the University of Arkansas campus Friday showing off their creativity and their science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills.

About 65 of the Leverett students competed in the first Razorback STEM Challenge sponsored by the Education Renewal Zone and the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education and Health Professions.

Lindsey Swagerty, director of the Education Renewal Zone, and Priscilla Wetzel, ERZ program coordinator, worked with Vinson Carter and Mike Daugherty, professors who teach in the college's STEM education program, to put on the competition. It was a variation of the Razorback Technology Challenge developed by Daugherty that was held for older students in Arkansas and surrounding states the past nine years.

U of A education students in Swagerty, Daugherty and Carter's classes helped the children from Leverett with the problem-solving challenge. Each team of third- and fourth-graders had one U of A student mentor working with it, and other U of A students worked the supply tables where the children obtained the supplies they needed for the project.

The project required students to use common items such as cardboard, yarn, masking tape, dowel rods, sewing bobbins, paper clips, popsicle sticks and plastic spoons to build a crane that could lift a golf ball at least 12 inches off the table surface. The teams competed to see whose crane could lift the golf ball to that height in the shortest time.

Students had lunch and took home a Razorback STEM Challenge T-shirt after an award ceremony. See more pictures on the College of Education and Health Professions Facebook page.