Michael Focht is a middle school teacher in Titusville, Florida, and field tested our GeoHazard modules.
Do the names Matthew, Nicole, Ian, or Irma give you pause? Are they long-lost cousins? Friends from high school? For the students in my middle school science classes, these are the names of hurricanes that have impacted them over the last few years.
While some students enjoyed a few days off from school and hurricane parties with family, others went without electrical power for days or weeks, or had their home flooded by surging waters and heavy rain. The nervous stress of waiting for a hurricane to arrive in our area is felt by all. Other than helping with the physical preparations needed with an approaching storm, students often lack ways to relieve the stress they are experiencing around the uncertainty of potential storm impacts and how they may be affected. Helping students understand the hurricane processes, the potential storm risks, and how those risks change or are enhanced by storm strength can empower them for what’s ahead.
Through the National Science Teaching Association (NSTA), our school was fortunate to learn about the resources offered by the Concord Consortium. While there are many resources offered to teachers and schools at no cost through their STEM Resource Finder, the Concord Consortium was recruiting teachers to test a new online learning module on hurricanes. As we’re on the east coast of Florida, our school was the perfect fit to test this module.
Our sixth-grade students who enroll in a yearlong integrated science class were chosen to participate in the field test. The class includes a multi-week unit on the more violent motions that occur in nature, including hurricanes. Our primary goal was allowing students, who already have personal experience with hurricanes, to delve deeper into the topic and build knowledge that will benefit them in preparing for future storm events. A secondary goal, connected to the fact that our school uses one-to-one devices, was to challenge our students to interact with online learning units that offer a wide range of media to enhance the learning.
Our school also has the special privilege of being a Microsoft Showcase School, thus our students are well versed in using Microsoft-based products. However, starting with the shutdowns caused by the COVID pandemic, teachers and students struggled with how best to incorporate online learning content with in-person teaching in the classroom. We found that many online learning modules included text and videos to convey the material and match objectives. While helpful and more interesting than just a static textbook, those resources lacked the ability to truly challenge students in STEM classes.
“STEM education makes learning ‘real’ and gives students opportunities to see the connection between the content they are studying and the application of that content in authentic and relevant ways” (NSTA, 2020). The goal in STEM is to present real-world observations and problems and allow students to research and experiment to develop solutions. Online learning modules that provide simulations, present real-world scientific data, and allow students to convey open-ended responses to prompts best support the goals of STEM education in the science classroom.
The GeoHazard Hurricane Risks & Impacts module does all that by challenging students to engage in critical thinking as they investigate hurricanes through the Hurricane Explorer simulation.
A hurricane’s changing path and strength as it moves toward Florida in Hurricane Explorer.
As my students worked through the module, I observed an increase in proficiency in using online-based learning and processing of critical questions through simulation. I also observed my students’ understanding of the formation of hurricanes and, thus, the inevitability of a future increase in hurricane frequency and strength based on current scientific projections. This seemingly dire result opened the door to some very valuable discussions between student partners and as a whole class on what can be done to reduce the risks to our lives and property and bring in real-world solutions the students can share with families and community members.
The Hurricane Risks & Impacts module includes a pre- and post-assessment to gauge how well students engaged with and understood the material. On rare occasions, I provide my students with pre-unit quizzes and assignments to evaluate their initial understanding. Many students protest when asked to answer questions about material they may have never been exposed to. That said, the pre-test was an excellent way to gauge students’ understanding going into the module, and it was clear from the results that students had not studied hurricane formation or how to interpret weather forecasts. In addition, my students struggled with vocabulary comprehension.
Once students began progressing through the module, they typically fell into one of three categories. Some students worked very hard at understanding the content and doing their best to fill in the questions with thoughtful responses. The second group of students typically rushed through the module sections and provided incomplete responses. The third group was made up of students who had difficulty in understanding the content, the questions, or both.
In response to my observations after the first full class period using the module, I adjusted my lesson plans to accommodate more time to discuss the online questions. While I varied the application of this, by using teacher-directed discussion, small student groups, or one-on-one questioning, I quickly found I could challenge the “rushing group” of students by asking comprehension questions and encouraging them to slow down and really try to understand the material. I would ask the first group questions beyond the scope of the module to further challenge their critical thinking and problem-solving abilities and have them make real- world connections. For the students who needed more assistance and support, this pause allowed me to directly answer questions, model how to read the graphs and maps in the lessons, and review the key concepts. The hurricane module allowed students to proceed at a pace that best suited their learning and provided me with more time to focus on students who needed extra assistance or motivation to complete the assignments.
I used the Class Dashboard to track students’ responses and saw dramatic improvements in their writing as they worked through the open-response questions in the five activities in the module. Additionally, my students made impressive gains in the automatically scored multiple-choice questions from the pre-to-post assessments. Other online learning modules used only multiple-choice questions and quizzes. Students would answer, get it right or wrong, and then move on without any in-depth learning or conceptual assessment. By incorporating open-ended simulations and opportunities to engage in critical thinking, the hurricane module encourages students to be thinkers and doers!
Adding a Hands-on Component
I incorporated a hands-on activity near the middle of the hurricane module to give students a break from their devices. “Storm Protection” was an activity I obtained many years ago from ScienceWorld magazine (Scholastic, 2013). The activity involved the students constructing a paper house with specific dimensions and limited materials. We tested the houses, taped to a tray, in front of a large fan and increased the speed of the fan at various intervals. Students observed what the wind was doing to the model house and inferred the results for what would happen to real houses in a hurricane.
This activity directly connected to the hurricane module’s fourth activity where students were asked to assess the damage from a photo taken during hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. The resulting class discussion and connections made between the hurricane module simulation and the hands-on activity really helped to engage students. Students considered their solutions for the paper house and then translated those to real-world solutions on houses that could be built to withstand hurricanes. The introduction of an activity apart from the online module infused energy into the students as they wrapped up the online activities.
The hurricane module provides students with the ability to delve deep into the understanding of hurricane formation, test the ideas of this formation with the Hurricane Explorer simulation, and use this knowledge to better protect themselves and their families when hurricanes inevitably come to Florida’s space coast. Various parts of the hurricane module sparked creative peer discussions and brought about new questions not covered within the curriculum. One student even commented how it was “fun to learn about something close to us rather than things that are always far away.”
In science education, the ability to introduce materials and topics that relate to students greatly increases engagement in the learning and retention of the main objectives (National Foundation for Educational Research, 2011). While hurricanes are certainly a present threat for our students, national coverage of hurricanes brings the reality of hurricanes to every student across the country. The learning gained from the hurricane module allowed our students to problem solve and develop solutions, skills applicable to any natural disaster that students from every area will be confronted with and must overcome. The hurricane module complemented our school’s goals and provided our students with an interactive, online-based learning unit that will support them when the next hurricane comes to our area.
References
National Foundation for Educational Research. (2011). Exploring young people’s views on science education: Report to the Wellcome Trust. Accessed February 19, 2023, https://wellcome.org/sites/default/files/wtvm052732_0.pdf
National Science Teaching Association. (2020). STEM Education Teaching and Learning, NSTA Position Statement. Accessed February 20, 2023, https://www.nsta.org/nstas-official- positions/stem-education-teaching-and-learning
Scholastic Incorporated. (2013). Storm Protection Activity Sheet, Scholastic ScienceWorld Magazine, January 14, 2013.