Extreme Environments

Students create and demonstrate submersibles; then discuss the process and the challenges they encountered.

The class science inquiry was on extreme environments and the essential question for the unit was: “Why do we explore extreme environments?” When one of the students made an interesting connection between extreme environments and submarines, the teacher noticed a keen interest among the class, and crafted an invitation and challenge via the classroom blog.

Students formed teams for this project; some chose to work individually.  The teacher also made a submersible; he posted his trials on his blog for each phase of construction.  This is the phase 2 “modeling” part of the inquiry.  Through his blog, teams and parents were able to follow and facilitate discussion with each other. 

The final experiment: Students brought their submersible to the front of the class and demonstrated/explained:

  1.  What did you learn about submarines?

2.  What was the greatest challenge you faced?  Were you able to overcome this?

Phase 1: “Science experimentation” --this is where a lot of scaffolding, science technique and necessary experimentation occurs, basically a place where prior knowledge and scientific process can be drawn from. Consequently, many of the learning outcomes that currently exist are met here. 

Phase 2: “modeling”-- this is where the teacher, through formative assessment of phase 1 and knowledge of their students areas of strength and deficit can craft a “whole group demo” of a sample inquiry that students will be doing on their own.  This is also an area where the teacher might teach necessary skills like a computer program/technology or how to create a comic strip together knowing they will be asked to create one on their own. As well here, the teacher can re-teach something that he/she noticed the students didn’t grasp in phase 1.

Phase 3 is where students begin their own inquiry carrying the prior knowledge and expectations from both phase 1 and 2.