Adding Narrative to Water Resistance

For this final example I wanted to do another full narrative for the lesson. Again I used the Story Cubes to help the creative process along. Here are my results.

With this I came up with a simple narrative which builds on the previous museum story in which the class have now gone on a geography trip to the Amazon Rainforest. On this trip the class finds themselves being chased by aggressive indigenous people. They find an area with varying types of water/swamp land and they must choose work out which is the safest way to cross. After successfully negotiating the first task, they will be faced with a river to cross before the indigenous people find them. Here a reminder of the tasks I have modified along with the Narrative below.

Water Resistance

Objectives	Elements
Demonstrate how different liquids have different properties on small objects such as pennies (Combined with) Drop two balls from the same height on to the table. One through air and the other through water (via tank) to show the effects of up thrust	Objective is to show learners that different liquids have different up thrust and therefore oppose gravity to different degrees. Competition students will predict which liquids will have a greater resistance to gravity (cause the penny to drop slowest) Explanatory Feedback NO POINTS as this would undermine the value of point acquisition. Story/Narrative could be of benefit here however this will be covered off at a later date.
Design I boat that both floats, and moves the fastest/farthest when pushed through the water.	Goal to create a boat that both floats indefinitely and is able to cross the greatest distance with a single push start. Rules are important here as there are a lot of variables. Firstly the push should be done by the teacher to keep it as close to fair as possible, this is not a contest of strength. The boat must be made from a pre-selected assortment of materials (wood, plasticine, tin foil etc.) Cooperation by having teams work on the task together. Competition again through only having control of their own mastery of the task as opposed to conflict. Diagnostic Feedback is required here to explain and diagnose why some boats fail where other succeed. Completion Achievements for any team that complete the task. Badges for any student that manages to beat a pre-determined distance (it should be an exceptional distance bench marked prior to the lessons start. Points and Leaderboards again for the students who come in first, second, and last. Failure is easily worked in here as it allows for students who “sink” their boats to try again at the end. This can also be worked in as a round system with points awarded for each round with the ultimate winner being determined at the end by the score. This works in Score and Replayability.

Act 1

It has been two months since the museum incident with the class and Mrs Pennington and to make up for the upset caused by this, the museum owners have paid for an all expenses trip to see the Amazon Rainforest in in Brazil. No more than two days passed before you and your class find themselves lost in the jungle being chased by angry indigenous hunters! Somehow you have all managed to get a little way ahead of the hunters but now find yourselves on the edge of a waste deep swamp. You can see several different paths to the other side, all of them involve wading waste deep through different areas of water and mud. How do you decide which path will let you cross the fastest and let you escape the hunters?

First of all speak to the class and get their ideas on factors that could slow them down when moving through a liquid such as water or swamp that wouldn't normally matter when running on solid ground. If a learner mentions water resistance then focus and drill down on the subject. If not then work water resistance into the discussion. After this move on to explain/discuss that different liquids can have different levels of resistance. Demonstrate this taking several sealed jars with different liquids and a penny in, letting the pennies all rest on the bottom and then turning the jars over to watch the penny fall. Ask students what they notice. Explain that because each liquid has a different level of resistance, the pennies fall at different rates. Ask students to think of a way, in the jungle, they could test to see which liquid would be easiest to move through with the least amount of resistance.

Explain that if they took rocks from the ground and dropped them in the liquids they can see that the fastest sinking rock would be the liquid with the least resistance. Demonstrate this by dropping a stone in each of two containers, one containing water and the other something thicker such as honey or syrup. Ask a learner to assist by dropping one of the stones and use your spare hand to drop a third stone onto the table through the air. Re-emphasise how the first stone to hit the ground experienced only minimal wind resistance until it hit the table, how the water rock has up thrust working against gravity causing it to fall slower, and that the syrup rock took the longest as syrup had more up thrust and more resistance than the water. After this proceed to act 2.

Act 2

The class quickly grab as many rocks and stones as they can carry and start dropping them in the different areas. Some sank straight to the bottom, others hit the surface and sank much slower. These areas should be avoided as walking through them will be much harder and will slow you down. The class quickly find the fastest rout through the swampland and make it to the other side. They can no longer hear the shouts of hunters, they must have given up when they got to the swamp and turned back. You all breathe a sigh of relief. Mrs Pennington suddenly speaks up, “Class I can hear running water, I remember on the map that the camp beside a river, we should all head towards the sound and see what we find.” After several minuets walk you all come across a large river and amazingly, across on the other side you can see your camp! There is only one problem, there is no bridge across. You will all need to build a raft to cross. Using what you now know about water and air resistance, in teams you must construct a boat or raft that will both float, and travel fast through the water.

Ask the learners to form groups of their own choosing to foster autonomy and then give them 20 minutes (scale to fit the lesson time remaining) to build a boat using the materials provided (paper, plasticine, tin foil, tape  etc.) Explain the rules of the challenge, the boat MUST float and will be pushed by the teacher at the same force each time. The winners will be the boat the travels the farthest OR in the event that more than one team reaches the other side, the boat that reaches the other side the quickest. Remind learners about how the spinners changed depending on where weight was applied and also encourage learners to think about how the shape of the boat can change how much resistance the boat experiences in the water.

After the time is up, take each teams boat in turn and push each across the tank taking care to push each boat with the same force. Have a student time each attempt with a stop watch to find out how long it takes the boats to reach the other side (if at all) and record this time down on a visible table (white board etc.) If a boat does not make it to the other side, measure its distance travelled and record that instead. If any boats sink (and time permits) allow those teams to go away for a short time to work on their boat and try again. Once all the results have been taken, award the winning team members points and award badges to any team members whose boat made it to the other side, badges for the achievement. Remember to give plenty of feedback to diagnose why boats either failed or succeeded. After this proceed to Act 3.   

Act 3

Congratulations, all of the students in boats they reached the other side made is safely back to camp. Any students in boats that failed to reach the other side luckily were picked up farther down the river by search parties and brought back to camp. The whole class managed to get over their ordeal and enjoyed the rest of their holiday in piece.

This lesson is designed to foster team work as well as completion while offering plenty of autonomy for the leaners to explore and experiment with the subject of water resistance.