Introduction
Years ago, when I was in the third grade, I had the most amazing teacher. Her name was Mrs. Holt. She was firm, but fair, with a ready laugh and a listening ear, and she was a master in building relationships with her students and their families. Through the strength of those relationships, she was able to bring out the very best in each of us in her classroom. In addition to her knack for relationship-building, what I remember most clearly about her classroom is the way in which she did not divide the day into discrete subjects. Luckily, this was in the days before standardized testing! Most of our learning occurred through asking big questions about topics that fascinated us—and then doing the reading, writing, studying the math and the relevant history, and setting up experiments to answer those questions. This integrated approach lit a fire in each of us, and we were better, more focused, and passionate learners because of it. I feel like it is safe to assume that many of us who chose to become educators had a Mrs. Holt somewhere along the line. Perhaps for you, as for me, that teacher continues to inspire you to be like them professionally and to ignite the love of learning in each child under your care.
In elementary school, it is often true that the sciences are, from a curriculum importance standpoint, treated as tertiary at best. This frustrating situation is exacerbated by the standardization of curricula and the advent of high-stakes testing. If it is not directly related to improving that test score, it is all too often treated as disposable! But I believe that the fundamental skills which are taught in the process of scientific inquiry—asking questions one is curious or passionate about, researching and examining the evidence that exists, thinking deeply about the origins of what you read and see, and discovering knowledge and beauty that you never knew were there—are not only fun and fascinating in their own right, but they form the bedrock of all analytical thought. And that is vital to gaining a deep understanding of any subject. My goal in writing this curriculum unit is to do for my students what my third-grade teacher did for me—integrate multiple subject areas in the exploration of big questions, and in so doing, hopefully light a fire in each of them.
I am privileged to serve the students and community of William Fox Elementary School in Richmond, Virginia. Fox is a K-5 urban elementary school with approximately 400 students from diverse backgrounds. Our students come from both socio-economically privileged and disadvantaged homes, in approximately equal measure. There is a significant range of parental involvement and students’ home support, which contributes to a wide range in students’ skill levels and academic preparedness. Approximately 11% of the population is made up of students with disabilities. All students with disabilities receive at least a portion of their academics in the general education classrooms.
The Alien in Your Backyard: Using Exoplanetary Science to Explore the Ecosystems of Earth is a curriculum unit for upper elementary students focused on using an investigative research approach to study Earth’s living things in a variety of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems by taking on the role of an alien scientist. It will explore the following big questions:
- What is life?
- What is required for life to exist and thrive on Earth?
- How do organisms, communities, and populations of living things adapt to their specific ecosystems?
- What happens when changes to an ecosystem—regardless of their origin—produce fundamental changes to the habitability of that system?
Through these questions, this curriculum unit will delve into multiple Virginia Science Standards of Learning (SOLs), including understanding behavioral and physical adaptations of living things, relationships among living organisms and their dependence on one another for survival, diverse aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, and the human role in protecting and conserving limited resources. Multiple opportunities for cross-curricular learning in reading, creative writing, and mathematics are also included in the Activities section of the unit; teachers are strongly encouraged to implement them too in order to provide a chance for students to engage in integrated, wrap-around learning. However, the Content Background section will focus primarily on the science aspects of the unit.
This unit will begin by looking outward—what do we know about life in the universe? Does it exist elsewhere? Could it? How would we know? Using picture books featuring alien characters as an initial jumping-off point, students will learn how astronomers ask and answer these questions, then will cast themselves in the role of a scientist from an alien world. The focus then shifts inward to our own backyard. As part of a research group, they will be tasked by an imagined interstellar body with studying and reporting back on the “newly discovered” planet Earth and its varied ecosystems. The unit culminates in a group presentation utilizing Google Slides.
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