Challenger LEARNING Center

Created by a grant in 1990 received by Dayton Public Schools, the Challenger Center at Kiser Elementary School uses space exploration to motivate students. The Challenger Space Center offers Kiser students the chance to complete an exciting Mission to Mars. For instance, 3rd-graders (called Micronauts) design a mission menu and plan for transporting high-water content foods to Mars. Students use counting, weighing, and calculations to determine the weight of food (like a banana) in its natural form, dehydrated, and re-hydrated. Each grade develops its mission and experiments, and in the end, students use literacy skills in presenting findings. Consistent with the studies, our PBL combines direct instruction with inquiry methodology (Duke et al., 2017; Harris et al., 2015).

Although closed during the Fall of 2020, the Challenger Learning Center has a variety of resources online, including teacher activity guides.