This week Middle Schoolers had a deadline; they had to complete their colony and make it ready to present for the Space Week Community Event on Thursday evening.  All those ideas researched and discussed last week (see Mission to Mars blog post) had a deadline. The time had come to get down to business and make it happen.

As teachers, we provided students with the project requirements and then put teams in charge of their own daily deadlines.  They decided task priorities, who would be responsible for each task, and assigned themselves homework to keep their projects on schedule.

It was a very busy week and students were constantly negotiating needs and creatively solving problems that unexpectedly popped up.  They had to listen to each other and answer to each other. And while it felt like students weren’t gaining academic knowledge as they painted and hot glued and designed miniature greenhouses, we heard them use what they had been learning to justify their choices.  “Wind power will be better than solar because of our location in this valley.” “We need to have a greenhouse – people won’t want to eat dehydrated food forever.” Students were constantly using and developing the skills that are more sought after by today’s employers.

We found ourselves quite proud of our innovative designers.  Listening to them show off their completed colonies, we were convinced that they understood the complexities of colonizing Mars by how they were able to explain the inclusion of each element of their design.  It was another great week of learning!