Designing Trellises
Emily Harris, Ilana Lowe, Lindsey Mohan, Whitney Cohen, Sara E. Severance, Terra Giotta, Carlo Albano, Jeffrey Snowden
Science and Children
Urban Farm DB summary
This is a practice report describing "Designing Trellises," a guided grade 3-5 engineering unit set in a U.S. school garden. Students work collaboratively toward a shared classroom goal of designing, researching, prototyping, building, and testing 2-3 pea plant trellises for the school garden. Through this process — asking questions, planning and carrying out investigations, and designing solutions, among other science and engineering practices — students work out the disciplinary core ideas of balanced and unbalanced forces. At the end of the unit, teachers and students reported that students felt a strong sense of agency and pride from asking and answering questions and creating designs that mattered to them and their school community.