USING LONG-TERM SOIL EXPERIMENTS TO ENGAGE STUDENTS IN SCIENTIFIC LEARNING

Project-based activities and research experiments provide excellent means to engage students in learning. The Environmental Science Institute (ESI) at The University of Texas at Austin is funded by the National Science Foundation to support its GK-12 Program. In this program, graduate students and K-12 Teachers work together to create innovative lessons. Through this collaboration, we implemented long-term soil experiments in 5th grade science at Hornsby-Dunlap Elementary (HDE) and 6th grade science at Covington Middle School (CMS), in the Del Valle and Austin Independent School Districts, respectively.

At HDE, students are engaged in outdoor projects and small group learning activities in the Teaching Garden. The students conducted a long-term soil experiment by planting vegetables in two different types of soils. In the garden planning portion of the project, students learned the botanical names, researched growing requirements, documented germination period, drew the seedling, and calculated the most efficient plant spacing. Students monitored the project by mapping the vegetable garden. They learned the basic components of a map, created their own legends for the vegetables, and used a graph to display the total number of each type of plant growing in each soil.

The students at CMS planted herbs in three different soils to evaluate how soil type affects plant growth. Students performed quantitative and qualitative analyses of the soils and hypothesized which would provide the best growing conditions for their plants. Students were responsible for collecting data and documenting observations. They learned about the pH scale and how pH influences a plant’s ability to uptake nutrients. They measured the pH of the three soils and evaluated how the pH may have influenced plant growth. The students concluded the project by compiling, graphing, and analyzing the data collected over six weeks. The students’ excitement and interest in the project provided the opportunity for educational engagement, increased knowledge of the scientific method, and enhanced scoring on the AISD Student Learning Profile Exam.

The GK-12 program promotes dissemination of educational materials. All learning activities developed in the GK-12 Program are made available to teachers via the ESI website (www.geo.utexas.edu/esi).