Designing Trellises

Abstract

Schoolyards and school gardens present a rich context for students to engage with engineering and design. We describe the Designing Trellises unit, an example of a guided grade 3–5 engineering experience in the garden. In this unit, students work collaboratively toward a shared classroom design goal: creating 2–3 pea plant trellises for the school garden. They collaboratively design, research, prototype, build, and test their trellis designs. Students figure out disciplinary core ideas about balanced and unbalanced forces through engagement in asking questions, planning and carrying out investigations, designing solutions and other science and engineering practices. At the end of the unit, teachers and students report that students feel a strong sense of agency and pride as they ask and answer questions and create designs that are important to them and their school community.

Keywords:

• 3–5
• NGSS
• engineering
• field trips/field study
• engineering design
• motion and stability: forces and interactions
• cooperative groups
• science and engineering practices

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Chaim Gingold for reviewing an early draft of this article and providing feedback. This work is supported by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative’s Professional Development for Agricultural Literacy program (accession number 1021998) from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and should not be construed to represent any official USDA or U.S. Government determination or policy.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emily Harris

Emily Harris ([email protected]) is a research scientist at BSCS Science Learning in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Ilana Lowe is a 5th grade teacher at Main Street Elementary in Soquel, California. Lindsey Mohan is a senior science educator and associate director for program innovation at BSCS Science Learning. Whitney Cohen is the Education Director at Life Lab in Santa Cruz, California. Sara Severance is a 7th grade science teacher at Flagstaff Unified School District in Flagstaff, Arizona. Terra (Jade) Giotta is a Living Classroom Educator and Carlo Albano is a Principal at Santa Cruz Gardens Elementary in Santa Cruz, California. Jeffrey Snowden is a research scientist at BSCS Science Learning.