When
Tuesday, June 6, 2023
Naco Elementary School, Naco, Arizona.
Group 2: 3rd – 5th grades (18 students)
UA Staff: William Borkan, Raquel Ornelas
Experiments Performed: Uptake of Dye in Celery Stalks; Potting Lima Beans
Learning Outcomes: Teach students the scientific method, connect scientific experiments with everyday activities, resources, such as the water cycle and the food cycle. Introduce students to water quality and how it impacts plant, animal, and human health.
Reflections: The students were very engaged with the experiments conducted. The first experiment, with celery and food dye, took longer than expected, but plenty of time remained for the lima bean potting experiment. No spills occurred either! That was a success. In the celery experiment, I spent time with each group to explore their thinking about what color dye would show up best with the celery, and what does it mean for things that we cannot see in the water? We cut the celery together as a group and saw how much dye traveled up the xylem of the stalks, compared to a control stick that was in clear (un-dyed) water.
In the bean potting experiment, Raquel did a great job connecting the quality of the water to the quality of life for plants and us. The bean experiment was fun for the kids too, and the short activity made time for more conversation about the significance of beans in our life. After potting our beans, we talked about the resources that beans need to live – water, sunlight, soil, and love. We talked about soil health and what makes up soil – which was great because the kids saw what was in the potting soil so could answer the question, “what makes up soil?”. In our final discussion, I loved the question, “how many beans would it take to fill a taco, burrito, or tostada?” and the follow-up, “how many plants, and how much time would it take, to make that many beans?”.
Group 3: Middle school - 6th-8th grade (14 students)
UA Staff: Jessika Mesa
Experiments Performed: Water Testing Kits; Potting Lima Beans
Learning outcomes: Teach students the scientific method, connect scientific experiments with everyday activities, such as water quality and the food cycle.
Reflections: The introduction into environmental science activities was short and I am unsure how helpful it was. In the future, I think showing an educational video to grab attention will be more effective. The water testing kits went well but students needed lots of reminders of the scientific method and water quality factors. In the future, I believe handouts of each, maybe a matching game or fill in the blank will help students retain information. There were about 4-5 students per water quality kit. Moving forward, I believe water quality kits per 2-3 students would be ideal; this allows students to be more engaged with the testing process instead of watching other students take on the experiment. Students seemed to really enjoy testing water around their school and finding water can be used for some processes but not all (i.e. drinking, showering, washing hands, etc). The lima bean experiment was more-so attention grabbing and a take-home message for the students. The middle school students were not too excited about learning about the life cycle of plants.