standard 1.2

inquiry-based learning environment

Students work independently and collaboratively in an inquiry-based learning environment that encourages finding creative solutions to authentic and complex problems.

SPARK Academy prides itself on being a school where inquiry, creativity, and problem-solving is highly valued and explicitly taught. Our students have opportunities at all grade levels to work on real world, open-ended problems. At SPARK Academy, we believe that curiosity SPARKs exploration, exploration SPARKs ownership, and ownership SPARKs empowerment. This is best exemplified through many of our grade level integrated Project and Problem Based units.

response: Third grade Project Based Unit

Our third grade teachers have developed a community-focused unit called Birds of a Feather, to be implemented winter 2020. This unit grew from the third grade science standard that challenges students to evaluate engineered solutions to a problem created by environmental changes and the resulting impact on animal populations living in the environment, specifically birds in our area. This investigation allows our students to use data they gather from research, observations, and interviews with a local birding expert and Master Gardener to design and build a habitat that would attract local birds to our school grounds. This will include identifying and installing plants and shrubs in our courtyard and gardens and using the engineering design process to design and build birdhouses appropriate for the species of birds that the students want to attract to our gardens.

Our student-created birdhouses will need to be designed with enough precision that one of our school volunteers can follow the plans and cut the wood for them. Once the wood is cut, students will assemble the birdhouses, decorate them, include QR codes on the house with their research information about the bird species that will live in the house, and sell them at our city’s annual Earth Day & Outdoor Expo, sponsored by the Keep Athens-Limestone Beautiful organization. Birdhouses will also be installed on the school grounds and in public spaces around our city. Funding for materials for this project has been provided by the Athens City Schools Foundation through their annual grant program.

Throughout this project, students will work in groups of three to choose and research their species of local bird. Each group will have the opportunity to create their own design for the birdhouse based on their research and will be able to decorate the outside of the house as the team chooses.

evidence: Third grade Project Based Unit

Bird of a Feather Third grade unit plan

Birds of a Feather Unit

response: First Grade Problem Based Unit

First grade students use their knowledge of plant parts and defences to design a protective barrier that protects the house of the Three Bears from Goldilocks. Students researched plant parts using the digital literacy resource Epic! and observed plants in our outdoor beds to see how plants protect themselves from pests and humans to help them survive. The first graders were then given the challenge to create a landscape using only plants that would help the Three Bears family keep Goldilocks from breaking into their house. Each pair of students was given a limited amount of materials they could use to create bushes, thorns, poisonous, or distracting plants that would keep our “Goldieball” (a tennis ball with a face and hair drawn on it) from getting through the landscape and to where the house would be.

Each team worked to combine their individual ideas into one idea, built their landscapes using only the provided materials, tested their designs using Goldieball, and then redesigned to improve their landscape. The final test was a presentation for the entire class, when teams had to explain their design and what each element of their landscape represented. Sullivan’s explanation, posted for her family on Seesaw since she was unable to take her landscape home, can be found by clicking the link below.

evidence: Protect the house of the three bears

Sullivan's explanation

Keep Goldieball Out! First grade unit plan

1 Keeping Goldiball OUT!

response: Second Grade Problem Based Unit

During the 2016-2017 school year, our pilot group of second grade students were hired by our district Child Nutrition Program Coordinator to investigate why students were not drinking milk at breakfast. Students hypothesized that the milk included with the Breakfast in the Classroom program was not cold enough once breakfast was actually served and that serving the students one choice of milk flavor was not giving students enough options for breakfast. Our second grade students created a survey, which was distributed digitally to all students in the Athens City school system, asking students if they drank milk for breakfast, which flavor they chose, and the reason they did not drink milk for breakfast, if applicable. Students then worked in groups of three and tested the temperature of the milk and the air temperature of the bags the milk was stored in the classrooms. Students also counted how many cartons were consumed and how many were thrown away each day for a week. The class compiled all of the data they collected and learned that students were drinking milk each morning that, on average, was ten degrees warmer than the optimal temperature and that students did not like the flavor of milk provided by the lunchroom.

Our second graders then presented their findings to the Child Nutrition Program Coordinator and the school lunch building manager, along with the suggestions that they provide ice in the milk bags to help the milk stay colder in the classrooms and they provide a selection of milk flavors in each milk bag. According to the survey results, for every two cartons of milk, students would prefer five cartons of chocolate, three white, and two strawberry. The students were very excited when the lunch room implemented their suggestions immediately.

As a result of sharing this project, our students were given supplies to conduct a schoolwide dairy taste test, in which students could sample different flavors of milk, cheese, and yogurt. Again, the students collected and compiled the data and reported back to the lunchroom the results of the taste tests. As a culminating activity for the unit, the students visited the Belle Chevre cheese creamery in Elkmont, Alabama to learn how cheese is flavored and then made their own cheese in the SPARK Lab.

evidence: Second Grade Problem Based Unit

Milk Investigators unit plan

2 Milk Investigators

Students collecting milk data

Students sharing data with CNP Coordinator and school lunchroom manager

Second grade students running taste test

Students tabulating cheese taste test data

Rachel sharing taste test data graph

Planning for the Future

Students at SPARK Academy are constantly challenged to work collaboratively with other students in the classroom, especially when working on our Project and Problem Based units. Our task is to continue to assist our students, by teaching and practicing collaborative group skills and by continuing to refine the units we develop to challenge our students’ thinking and ability to find creative solutions to open-ended projects.

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