ORANGE — Despite spending the past few months studying westward expansion and the Oregon Trail, four Fisher Hill Elementary School students are about to head eastbound.
Students Brooke Bastine, Rosalie Baxter, Jaxson Lapan and Julie Behrens will represent their classmates at the MassCUE (Massachusetts Computer Using Educators) conference at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough on Thursday, Oct. 15. The students will showcase a digitally interactive board game they created based on the Oregon Trail, one of the two main emigrant routes to the American West in the 19th century.
MassCUE is a nonprofit that provides resources, ideas and networking opportunities for educators interested in bringing digital technology into the classroom. Its annual fall conference includes presentations from teachers showing how they’ve integrated technology into their classrooms, as well as a “CueKids” arena where students showcase how they’ve learned to use technology.
The Fisher Hill Elementary School students will present a project titled “Go West!” The students built, coded and animated the interactive board game, highlighting the challenges that travelers faced while journeying on the Oregon Trail in the 19th century. The students focused on the dangers of river crossings, creating a game where players can move a wagon-shaped piece across a board, attempt to cross a river, and either succeed or fail, leaving them unable to continue their journey to the finish line.
In 2025, students presented their work creating architectural designs of their school at the conference. This year, in recognition of 2026 marking 250 years since the nation declared independence, the school has been focusing more on United States history. Recent lessons have discussed the westward expansion chapter of American history, including the expeditions of Lewis and Clark, the Oregon Trail and other expansion efforts of the 19th century, inspiring the idea behind the game.
While MassCUE limits the presentation at the conference to only four students, more than a dozen worked on the project. Fifth and sixth graders worked together to create the design, fabricate the pieces, assemble and wire the board, and code and animate the corresponding computer portion of the game.
Everest Newton, one of the project’s lead coders, helped teach classmates how to code using Scratch to build the game. He said his favorite part of the project was continuing to build his coding knowledge, and he hopes the school gets selected to present at the conference again next year so he can show off his learning.
“The experience of learning and improving from last year to this year, I’ve just gotten so much better at this stuff,” Everest said. “I’m trying to be the best student that I can be and get all the opportunities I can take.”
Zevulon Williams, the lead animator on the project, said it took him about a week to design the animations of the wagon crossing the river and going over a mountain. He said the paintbrush tool in Scratch was difficult to use, so he layered different geometric shapes available in the program to create the different elements.
“The coding system is really limited, but for drawing you get to make it more fun, because you have to get creative,” Zevulon said.
The four students presenting the project to MassCUE attendees agreed that wiring the board was probably the most difficult part of the project, and the piece they were proudest of finishing. Brooke noted there was a lot of trial and error as the students learned how to attach the wires, organize them and map out what needs to go where and connect to what.
“That’s probably what we’ve spent the most time on,” Julie said.
In addition to technology skills, students tapped into their creativity. Work included using a laser printer to cut shapes, and piecing them together to build trees, wagons, mountains and a western-style building to serve as the starting point for the adventure.
Students in the Art Club painted and pieced everything together based on instructions from the students working on the science elements, who told them what the board needed to include, but gave them the creativity to decide to add extra details, like woodgrain on the wagon or fur on the ox pulling the wagon.
“I think it looks really nice,” Edwin Smith said. “Altogether, I think it turned out good.”
Other classmates who worked on the project included Lily Killay, Kinsley Quinn, Gracelyn Anderholm, Noah Larabee and Eli Wickline.
The students plan to showcase the project again, along with other projects they’ve worked on, later this academic year at Fisher Hill Elementary School’s “Fisher Forward” showcase. In March, the fifth and sixth graders will welcome family and community members to see what they’ve learned and how they’ve put their new skills to work.
