Titan AE

Grant

Abstract

According to Raintree Nutrition Incorporated this year, rainforests once covered fourteen percent of the earth’s land surface. Recent surveys have shown that the rainforest now covers a mere six percent and experts in the field estimate that the last remaining rainforest could be consumed in less than forty years. As one can see, deforestation is plaguing our planet along with other causes for depletion of nonrenewable resources; however, nonrenewable resources is not the only thing that today’s society has to worry about.
A more urgent and upfront area to look at in the world of depletion is urbanization. The Texas Department of Transportation states that eighty-three percent of the newcomers that migrate to the state of Texas locate to already congested areas of urban living. Not only are urban areas seeing an increase, but the demand for new roads is not being met on a timely manner. In fact, the Texas road capacity has increased by only a mere six percent over the last twenty years, not leaving enough room for expansion with the changing times. With this growing urgency in Texas’ overburdened state highway system, the state of those highways are threatening “safety, the environment, productivity, economic vitality”, and in general, “quality of life”.
With this in mind, there is a thought of necessity that there might come a time, in the near future, that the population of Earth might have to look elsewhere for those things that they need to survive. Before they go looking for these essential items, however, one must know what is necessary to sustain an earthlike existence. Through the six weeks given, our students will be able to conquer this task through the project based learning style and be able to apply the skills, research, and knowledge they have gathered throughout to change both the scope of today as well as tomorrow.

Rationale

Due to a decrease in global thinking and an increase in modernization of the globe, there may come a time where the world’s stage will need to look elsewhere for those items that re so vital to existence itself. The question then comes to what, at the basic level, do humans need to sustain this existence and where would the population go to obtain these essentials. This is the question that our project aims to answer through the six week period.
By completing this project, students will be able to obtain a major goal of all sciences, which is bridging the numerous and complex aspects of the disciplines. Too readily is the student willing to abandon an active pursuit of deep understanding of scientific concepts and therefore result in an inability to understand the scope of life on earth form the macroscopic to the microscopic view. They view the sciences as different entities, existing outside each other, with no cohesive bonds that begin to link together those aspects that were learned. With this skewed view of science, students do not see that the sciences inherently rely on an interdependent building structure organized around universal, scientific tenets. In the same vein, students commonly resort to looking through the present and ignoring the bigger picture in the end. The prediction skills that are needed in today’s fast-paced society are lost somewhere along the road through their individual and cooperative education.
Both at the national level and at the state level, educators are trying vigorously to fix these types of problems through the science curriculums. Throughout the state of Texas the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, more commonly referred to as the TEKS, hold educators accountable to standards which address the knowledge and skills needed for deep understanding of the various disciplines of science as well as ensure that all students are obtaining the same education across the board. For example, the TEKS addressing knowledge that should be obtained in grade eight about scientific practices shows a commitment to linking disciplines both in a broad manner, as evident in the introduction, as well as more thoroughly in the knowledge and skills portion. Consistent with the TEKS and trying to aim above and beyond the regular status quo, Austin Independent School District has set p their own working system of what all students should have grasped through the sciences entitled the Instructional Planning Guides, or IPG’s.
Along with standardized testing that is in practice, these high level curriculums seem to enforce the theory behind linking the disciplines of science in a way that the student can readily adhere to in practice. With the aid of our six weeks project, this will drive the concept thoroughly so that students can actually retain the elements learned from the entire experience.

Description

With the goal of improving the problem solving ability of the students, and in turn their performance on standardized tests that dominate current assessment techniques, this project demonstrates to the students the interconnectivity of the scientific disciplines while participating in inquiry-based experience. The six week project focuses dually on relating the four major disciplines in the sciences, and integrating technological knowledge, aiding students in future research and information presentation.
Once the students are engaged by a video presenting the problem visually, they are then led through four weeks of research and subject matter instruction. Each week is focused around a particular discipline and bridges naturally into the next, with the connections between the two being the focus of the transition. As subject knowledge builds, technology benchmark lessons are integrated into the class work, and the students gradually increase their researching responsibilities to answer the problem posed in the project. At the end of four weeks, students take responsibility for the remainder of their research by utilizing multiple days in class to become an expert in one of the four disciplines. Groups of four students, composed of one expert from each field will work together to design a solution and present their unique solution to the class, teacher and a real panel of experts that have acted as mentors for the duration of the project.
The inquiry-based, hands-on approach is an inherent part of the planet project that benefits from the composite, or multi-discipline, expertise and training of the middle teacher science teacher. The teacher must continually focus on the need and importance of relying on multiple science disciplines and guide the students to utilize one another’s contributions. Providing each student with a solid base of content knowledge, technological skills, and a choice for what they will study more in-depth, they gain ownership and earn a sense of accomplishment as they present their solution to the problem to their peer, teachers and mentors.

Calendar

Budget

Potential Impact

As seen throughout educational practices today, teachers are striving to find ways to reach the students and actually provide them with the opportunity to retain much of the knowledge gained throughout their scholastic year. One of these practices is the theory behind standardized testing and to some, these are archaic practices are not reaching enough students.
At the national level, numerous standardized tests are given. The National Science Teachers Association reported that tests were taken by science students in the fourth, eight, and twelfth grades. The tests that were given in 2000, were then compared to tests given in 1996. The results were that both the fourth and eight graders’ test scores were essentially unchanged in the four years, while the scores of the twelfth graders had declined slightly. This is to say that even if various cognitive strategies were tried that nothing was working to raise collective testing scores. Looking at the actions that Texas has come up with, one can see that the same instances are true across the board. In the 2002 Biology end of the course test, even though eighty percent of students did in fact pass the test, overall, minority representation, be it in factors of race, social economical, and/or English as a second language, the students fell below passing on all accounts.
Focusing more on students that are in the middle school grades, which is where our project will be taking place, there is a definite need for bridging disciplines that may be provided for in theory, but is still not an easily attainable goal set. Through completing our integrated project, students will gain this much needed skill. They will be able to utilize multidisciplinary strategies to try and answer a world-wide problem that is authentic and grounded in reality. Utilizing the skills acquired through the project lesson, the students will be able to go out into the community and be able to present their findings from a knowledgeable perspective to audiences. Finally, students will see the world around them as more than just meets the eye and in the future, will be more easily prone to actively taking a part in changing the scope of the world both locally and globally.

Evaluation

For this project to be successful, there are two goals the students need to meet: they need to link the different fields of science and look at the world through the eyes of a scientist.
One of the easiest goals to evaluate is the students’ understanding of how interdependent each field of science is. In our six week project we have the students learn important geology, biology, chemistry, and astronomy concepts and have them describe a new world to live on by showing how each field of science involves and/or affects the others. The most efficient way to assess the students understanding is through their final presentations. In the presentations, the students have to describe the planet they chose to live on and why that planet’s features are important to our survival. Another way to evaluate the projects’ effectiveness is through the science portion of the 8th grade Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) test. This exam tests for a students understanding of science concepts and their relationships. If the schools science TEKS scores increase it shows the value of the project.
As students work through the project, it is our hope that they begin to think why they would have to leave Earth and find another planet and what can we do so that we do not have to leave. To assess whether students really understood those questions and look at the Earth differently you have to look at the future choices they make. One way to do this is to look at the clubs the students join or start in high school such as a recycling club or a car pool club. And the ultimate assessment is to see how many students go on to college and become scientists.