Engineering our Shorelines 

In the days before your field trip, help your class prepare:

• Consider printing this chaperone guide with a map: English/Spanish and English/Chinese. Here is an interactive map with a sensory guide.

On the day of your field trip: 

• Please Please pre-assign students into groups of 3 and give each student  in every group one of the following roles:

-Civil Engineer

-Electrical Engineer

-Environmental Engineer.

       If class size calls for it, the majority can be in groups of 3 while a group of 2 or 4 can work with roles adjusted.  

• Have students use the restroom prior to the program start time. 

• Consider allowing your students a snack before the start of the program, especially if your class is in the 11:30am timeslot. 

This unit supports the following aspects of the Next Generation Science Standards: 

Science and Engineering Practices

• Developing and Using Models: 

  • Use a model to test cause and effect relationships or interactions of a natural or designed system.

  • Develop a diagram or simple physical prototype to convey a proposed object, tool, or process.

• Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions 

  • Use evidence to design multiple solutions to problems

  • Generate and compare multiple solutions to a problem based on how well they meet the criteria and constraints of the design solution.

Disciplinary Core Ideas

• 4-ESS3.B Natural Hazards - A variety of hazards result from natural processes (e.g., earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions). Humans cannot eliminate the hazards but can take steps to reduce their impacts.
   

• ETS1.B: Developing Possible Solutions - At whatever stage, communicating with peers about proposed solutions is an important part of the design process, and shared ideas can lead to improved designs. 

Related Performance Expectations

Remember, performance expectations are not a set of instructional or assessment tasks. This field trip activity is just one of many that could help prepare your students to perform the following hypothetical tasks that demonstrate their understanding:

• 3-5.ETS1-2. Generate and compare multiple possible solutions to a problem based on how well each is likely to meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.

• 4-ESS3-2. Generate and compare multiple solutions to reduce the impacts of natural Earth processes on humans.*