Introduction and Rationale
A voice came over the intercom, "Mrs. Moorman. Can you please report to room 123, our conference participants have arrived." I was meeting with one of my Enrichment students and his parent to discuss how he was feeling about school and why he was frustrated. I sat and listened as he explained how he liked school and liked learning but was bored in the classroom. He was a bright child, and he explained his frustration with learning something quickly and then having to wait for explanations and review while the rest of the class caught up. He was frustrated because he got it the first time and wanted to move on or, to put it in his words, "I just want to learn". What I got from his discourse was that he wanted more meat in his education than what is offered in the standard curriculum. My memory of this student-led conversation is what drives me to want to offer more to my students and develop a curriculum unit that adds substance to the skills we teach our students in Math, English Language Arts, Science, and Social Studies. Once students have mastered grade appropriate skills, or even advanced grade skills, then what? That is exactly what this student was saying, 'OK I've learned the material in this chapter, so now what? What do I do with the information I've learned and how can I use it?'
I teach Enrichment Math and Language Arts to the high achieving students selected primarily on the basis of their MAP test scores (NWEA — Measurement of Academic Performance). Our Enrichment program is structured as a pullout program with allocated class times ranging from 30 to 55 minutes for students in grades 1-5. Our operating premise is that high achieving students often do not meet their expected target growth goals in the regular classroom, particularly in subjects of their academic strength. In the regular classroom we often teach to the middle achievers and give that extra time and/or focus to the lower achieving students. Often our higher achieving students find themselves unchallenged and/or bored, as pointed out above.
Nanotechnology is an excellent topic to integrate into an existing math and/or science curriculum in order to either engage students in applying the math skills they have learned or explore the relevance of what they have learned about small organisms in their science units. It is also a topic that acknowledges the relationship between things that we have already observed in the real world and the new field of nanoscience.
This unit is an introduction to or overview of Nanotechnology intended for 5 th graders with the potential for adaptation for lower grade elementary students. Much of the information in this unit is at the conceptual level so that students and teachers can grasp the idea of what is going on, rather than the detailed explanations of the biology and chemistry underlying the processes. This overview describes the structure of matter including atoms and molecules, and how matter can be assembled into materials of nano-size. Differences in size will be illustrated by comparisons among objects that we see everyday and objects that are always around us, but we cannot see.
As we talk about innovations in nanotechnology, the concept of self-assembly will be explained and illustrated. Some of the differences in material characteristics at the nanoscale are identified including properties such as colorlessness, stronger bonds or increased stickiness, increased strength, and increased surface area. The topic of scale is also addressed by developing the relationship between size and common metric scales of measurement. Within this topic the focus is on equivalent measurements between the different size regimes such as macro, micro, and nano. This information will be related to instrumentation as well as functionality. Because this unit is intended for 5 th grade elementary students, I avoid complex calculations or computations: although the unit does introduce conversion factors within the metric scale, exponential notation, scientific notation, fractions, decimals, and percents. The information is kept manageable from a depth of knowledge perspective, but it is challenging and new enough to engage students and entice them into the field of nanotechnology.
One theme of nanotechnology is that materials made from the same atoms can have different properties, depending on the arrangement of atoms within the material. To illustrate this point, the unit discusses the various materials that can be made from carbon atoms: graphite, diamonds, buckyballs, and nanotubes.
Another theme of the unit is biomimicry, or the design of objects based on copy of patterns found in nature. There is a lot that we can learn from nature. Within the field of biomimetics there is exploration of its usefulness in the design of innovations. Through various activities, connections are made to some of the critters that elementary students study in their science kits including: crayfish, Bess beetles, grubs, butterflies, moths, crickets, mealworms, guppies, millipedes, and rollie-pollies. By examining critters that students have already been exposed to, and looking at them from a biomimetic perspective, the usefulness of studying those critters is reinforced. Students will better understand why we study nature and what relevance it has to our future. With that in mind, careers related to the field of nanotechnology are identified and researched so that potential career paths and opportunities can be identified, by looking at what would be involved to work in this new field of scientific study.
I have suggested at least one activity related to each major topic identified in order to cover the range of topics in an engaging way and to demonstrate more clearly the specific topic.
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