Abstract
Floods that used to happen every hundred years are now occurring more frequently. Human influences on the damage inflicted by flooding need to be well-understood by future voters and property-owners. Therefore, the timely topic of flooding was used as the focus of a special multi-grade enrichment short course taught by two university education professors for 26 preK-8th grade high-achieving and creative students. During the course, students listened to guest speakers (city council member, meteorologist, and environmentalist), watched two flood-related videos, read books on floods, viewed electronic presentations related to dams and recent floods, discussed causes, effects, and mitigations of flooding, and devised creative games from recycled materials to teach peers about flood concepts. The de Bono CoRT Breadth thinking skill system was used to organize many of the course activities. The flood lesson activities were relevant to these students who had experienced a flood of the city’s river the previous year and challenged students more than their typical classroom activities, an important finding considering that many gifted students drop out of school because of irrelevant and non-demanding class work. The course broadened students’ knowledge of floods and assisted them in thinking beyond the immediate situation.
Highlights
Elementary and middle school students who are high-achieving in science and who exhibit creativity are often not challenged or given the opportunity to fully use their abilities in the regular classroom
Objective of the Study and Rationale. The purpose of this project was fourfold: 1) to present highachieving elementary and middle school students with a challenging special enrichment short course; 2) to involve students with the real world problem of flooding directly connected to their community; 3) to provide students with the opportunity to study a science topic in-depth with expert instruction that provided models of possible careers; and 4) to ask students to create an authentic product—a flood game—that would allow them to practice creative thinking and invention while applying recently-learned information about floods
A fine motor skills game was made by a kindergarten student who was very concerned about the animals that would become engulfed in flood waters
Summary
Elementary and middle school students who are high-achieving in science and who exhibit creativity are often not challenged or given the opportunity to fully use their abilities in the regular classroom. Science and Technology Content Standard E for grades 5 - 8 states that all students should develop an understanding of abilities of technological design: “In the middle school years, students’ work with scientific investigations can be complemented by activities in which the purpose is to meet human need, solve a human problem, or develop a product rather than to explore ideas about the natural world” Students involved in invention work in Domain VI, “Viewing Science and its History as Human Enterprises.” In this science domain, students considered the motives of scientists, engineers, and technologists, along with investigating the history of technology and its effects on our society. These concepts were addressed as students learned of beaver dams, historic human dams, and modern hydroelectric dams during the project
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