My students need Arduino boards with specific sensors to build detectors, as well as beakers, batteries, soil, and more, to gather data on climate change issues and conduct experiments related to desertification.
In my classroom science takes on a life of its own. Students are at the center of everything "science" that we do. Real-world connections are found in creative projects that students help design and complete in groups. No one watches the clock in my room because it is too much fun! Science Rocks!
My students are wonderful energetic middle school kids from our entire county.
We have a racially diverse student body with a high percentage of free and reduced lunch students. Some have chosen to ride the bus an hour and a half just to get here daily because they are so interested in math and science. Our rural county started our school to offer some kind of STEM education to students here. We have had many challenges in getting a solid program moving without major funding. These students are appreciative of even our recycled junk that we use over and over. They would be so delighted to have real sensors and materials to study global climate change in a real world way. Our school is very involved in doing volunteer work in our community so that our students understand the needs of the larger world. Bringing this idea into my classroom through this project would help our students continue to think about how they can help stop long term environmental damage from climate change.
My Project
Environmental science presents crisis in today's world. My passion to "Teach for the Planet" is found in this project where students will study global climate change by looking at real impacts. My students will study human driven climate issues using Arduino boards and sensors which they will program to collect data on aspects of urban heat islands using remote sensing of surfaces and microclimates. Temperature, humidity, tropospheric ozone will be measured by sensors and Schoenbein testing paper for ozone. This becomes the lens we'll use to study climate based desertification which is an under-taught concept facing global grassland biomes. It threatens the poorest, most arid regions of our planet. Using Arduino soil hygrometer sensors, soils/sand similar to grassland biomes, students will design soil worlds to study relationships between global temps and soil dehydration rates leading to erosion, desertification and loss of biodiversity. Lost farmland creates global famine issues for study.
Real world contexts give rich meaning to climate change science as I "teach for the planet " in this unit.
Students will use "hands on" technology to study heat/hydration soil issues leading to desertification. They will grow in empathy and global awareness in this study of crisis in arid regions. They will see how urban western lifestyles possibly impact developing nations. Students will be educated to make greener decisions to live sustainably in their own future to help others globally.
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