Laying The Groundwork
This unit is going to be used for my Title 1 8th grade science class in Tulsa, Oklahoma were the student body is 53% female and 47% male, with a diverse racial makeup and roughly 83% of students classified as economically disadvantaged. Thoreau Demonstration Academy is a magnet school and uses a lottery-based enrollment process. While this unit is designed for my school the materials in it can easily be expanded or contracted and simplified if needed for a higher or lower grade level.
The project involves a long-term investment as soil building and it is not a rapid endeavor. The analogy related to the soil on earth would be the reversing of desertification to improve our overall environment on Earth. As students are working through this unit we will also be engaging in environmental science that relates to earth. By understanding how to reverse desertification of Mars it is an analogous for what we need to do on earth. Students will already have an understanding of how environmental systems work together to create the cycles on earth. This project simply allows them who gain an understanding in the same cycles by controlling them. Students will start with what is in essence a container of moist sand that is sterile. By adding the separate components outlined in this lesson, we can see how soil composition is built over time from pioneer species through layers of development to become a load that is capable of sustaining a myriad of food crops.
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