Before the Lesson/ Background Information
The Amazon Rainforest is disappearing before our eyes. Within your lifetimes as 10-year-olds to 13-year-olds, this rainforest has lost X many square miles. That's X times the size of this school! The rainforest is home to lots of biodiversity, which means there are lots of types of plants and animals. In fact, the Amazon is home to around X% of the Earth's biodiversity. This is quickly disappearing because if humans are destroying the rainforest, the animals have nowhere to go because the Amazon was their home. How can we stop this from happening?
Homework from Previous Lesson:
The Lesson
Part 1: Research
Students will begin individually researching the Amazon Rainforest on computers with the goal of finding a photograph that's meaningful to them. If students get stuck, try asking them to find a picture of something they didn't know about before or something that makes them feel sad about the Amazon Rainforest. The research component strengthens their curiosity and gives them the power to conduct their own research at home.
Students are randomly assigned partners within the classroom.
Partners discuss the pictures they found online with each other. The teacher walks around and engages with partners, inquiring what they found was interesting. The teacher challenges students with STEM questions, such as, "How can we calculate the disappearance rate of this rainforest? How many Amazonian species are currently endangered, and how many have gone extinct this year? Is this rate of extinction higher than the one in our local community? Why?"
Part 2: Creation of Models
Students will draw a diagram of a technology or architectural structure that would help to protect animals from deforestation, help the rainforest climate, or otherwise help with a specific problem they have identified with their research pictures. If time allows, students can create physical models to help explain their ideas using toothpicks, markers, glue, popsicle sticks, Q-tips, blocks, etc.
The teacher walks around and engages with partners, assisting with any issues and inquiring open-ended questions to help students think critically.
Display the designs in class. This is problem-based learning and project-based learning, and there are no wrong answers as long as the students try!
Homework for next time:
- Have each student teach their parents what they learned in class today and how they thought of a solution for a problem with a classmate.