Mission to Mars Success (Why taking risks pays off)
- Apr 4, 2017
- 3 min read
On my last practicum my grade 9 students took a journey to Mars! My associate teacher put her faith in me and let me take a risk in this activity. The Grade 9's were working in the Space Exploration strand and were focusing on Mars exploration- my momentum of wanting to create lessons that incorporate coding into the curriculum was still going strong. During the winter I had gone into a Grade 6 classroom where students coded a Sphero to move through a maze (area and perimeter in math). I had an idea (I thought of it in my dreams, but have since found that I was not the first one to think of this) to use Spheros to simulate programming a Mars rover. The school I was at was the home base of the Science and Technology coordinator, and working with them allowed my vision to evolve. What I thought of in my sleep and was nervous to even ask if my associate teacher would be willing to let me try turned into magic. In edu-speak what occurred was a three day student-led project based authentic learning experience.
The inspiration for this activity (and the introduction students recieved) was the recent CanMars2016 Mars Sample Return Analogue Mission. Students worked in teams to 1) build a model of Martian terrain using knowledge about Mars and 2) program a Lego EV3 Mindstorms robot "rover" to successfully traverse through this terrain to complete a "mission".
This activity was an experiment- I had no idea how the logistics would work or if it would end up a complete disaster, but I hoped that students would be engaged in this way of bringing the "real world" into their classroom.
In the end, I was blown away by how well this activity turned out. Students wanted to come in at lunch to keep working. Students were creating. Students were motivated to learn a new skill. Students were using 21st century skills. Students were teaching students. Students were excited. Students were proud.
When my students are making magic in the classroom, my first thought isn't to grab my camera to capture it, but I managed to get a quick video of the first day here. Students are working together to make a simulation of Mars terrain using plasticine and textbooks on craft paper, and another group is learning the basics of coding from a fellow student. I was going to teach an intro to coding, but persuaded this student that he should be the one to teach this, and it really was magical.
To simulate the future sample return mission, students worked to program two rovers that would work together where one rover would obtain a sample and bring it to a storage location where the second rover would pick up the sample and transfer it to the return ascent vehicle. Students had 2 days to work on their Mars terrain and their program. The third day was mission day. Just like real Mars exploration and the communications delay that exists, students weren't able to see the rovers in real time; they had to wait until after completion to see if their rovers were successful!
I knew that my students were engaged by this activity, because during 3 days attendance was perfect and I didn't have to encourage students to participate. But one student perfectly explained why he was engaged. I got him to repeat himself to I could record his thoughts!
This activity could have failed miserably, but I am so glad that my AT let me take the risk in this activity!
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