Science.5.11
The student is expected to design and explain solutions such as conservation, recycling, or proper disposal to minimize environmental impact of the use of natural resources.
Knowledge and Skills Statement
Earth and space. The student understands how natural resources are important and can be managed.
Further Explanation
Students have studied conservation of natural resources beginning in grade 1. In grade 2, conservation of natural resources includes reducing, reusing, and recycling. Grade 2 students also learn about proper disposal of resources. Grade 3 emphasizes the importance of conservation. Grade 4 connects the critical role of energy resources and how proper conservation, disposal, and recycling of natural resources impact the environment. In grade 5, students are applying their understanding of conservation, recycling, or proper disposal to develop a solution that minimizes environmental impact.
Students understand that the design process is an engineer’s basic approach to problem-solving and involves many different practices. These practices include problem definition, model development and use, investigation, analysis and interpretation of data, application of mathematics and computational thinking, and determination of solutions. These engineering practices incorporate specialized knowledge about criteria and constraints, modeling and analysis, and optimization and trade-offs.
The design process is an instructional method that can be used to teach and apply a variety of concepts in an integrated fashion. Students engage with integrated concepts from multiple disciplines and utilize design thinking as a mechanism to design a solution to an authentic problem. There are multiple model variations of the engineering design process, however, they all share the basic practices of asking questions or defining problems, brainstorming, planning a design, creating and testing a design, and improving the design. Throughout the process, students are engaged in problem-solving, teamwork, collaboration, and effective communication.
This process is non-linear and iterative. There is flexibility within the engineering design process that allows for a student to return to a step if needed. Often analysis and improvement will result in additional questions or problems that can be solved through additional design process iterations.
Supporting Information
Research
Royce, Christine Anne. “Teaching through Trade Books: Taking Note of Natural Resources.” Science and Children 45, no. 8 (April/May 2008): 14–16. https://webspace.ship.edu/caroyc/TakingNoteofNaturalResources.pdf
Summary: Students in this article learn how natural resources are used and why they are important. One book listed in the article outlines a community’s needs being met by natural resources, and how the availability of those resources affects the ability to the meet their needs. Students often struggle to understand what resources go into different items that they use. Teachers can collect items like pencils, paper, vegetables, and toothpaste that students will be familiar with to get them thinking about what natural resources are used to make them. Students should brainstorm a list of items that they have to use everyday in order to survive, and sort them into groups based on whether they are living or non-living and renewable or nonrenewable. Teachers can connect this back to the book by having students decide if these items could be mase using the resources used in the story.
Research
Weiland, Mary, Ann Boekhoff, and Tami Staloch-Schultz “Methods & Strategies: From Landfills to Robots.” Science and Children 49, no. 7 (March 2012): 72–76. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43747339.
Summary: In this article, the author outlines a lesson completed in an elementary classroom that is meant to increase awareness of how much waste we produce and encourage students and families to reduce the amount of waste they produce by recycling and reusing items. Families were given a questionnaire to determine how much recycling and reusing they already do at home. Students were asked to bring used items from home to make a class "landfill." This landfill was used to show students how much waste we produce and provide students with items they could use to create something new and purposeful. Students observed the benefits and cons of different packaging of everyday items as they sorted the items in their landfill into three categories: recyclable, reusable, and garbage. Students then practiced using the engineering process to build something new that could meet human needs using the items. Families were given a post-project questionnaire with the same questions as the pre-project questionnaire, which showed increased willingness to reduce, reuse, recycle, and decrease the amount of waste produced at home and in the classroom.