Sixth Grade students at Ehrman Crest Middle School recently concluded a unit on creating innovative products. In the Fall, students considered challenges they were having with various products and how they could make them better. Working in groups, students discussed and researched their various ideas to come to a consensus on the innovative products that they would create. The groups then produced technical drawings of their various products. Using their technical drawings, the groups (now more like mini-companies) used cardboard, recyclable materials, and other miscellaneous items to construct "working models" of their innovations. As part of the project, students also put together presentations and commercials about their innovations. Finally, each mini-company participated in a "Shark Tank" like activity in which the students addressed a panel of both community and school judges with their products, presentations, and commercials. Based on those scores, winning companies from each homeroom (with a couple of ties in some homerooms) were announced on February 15, 2023. Later this year, the winning companies will be rewarded with a field trip to Inventionland where the top four to five scoring companies will present their ideas to a panel of Inventionland judges.