Dash: A fresh approach to science
Living on Mars for 18 months can be a challenge. Just ask a group of teachers who went on a mission to the far-away planet.
They had to come up with lighting and communication systems. They needed food sources and exercise options. They also had to compose a compact, outlining the rules for life in the biosphere. The biggest challenge was to make everything from scratch with household items.
No one went to Mars – for real.
The “trip” was an activity of the Developmental Approaches in Science, Health and Technology (DASH) teacher institute at Uniontown Area High School.
The teachers who were grouped in the sixth-grade class of the two-week institute built the biosphere in a hallway and invited visitors on the last day to check out their project.
Plastic sheeting, duct tape, two fans and a large cardboard box may be unassuming on their own, but together they formed the Mars biosphere.
“I used three days to do this: one day to put it together, one-and-a-half days for classes to visit and a half-day to clean up,” said DASH instructor Linda Bechtol, a teacher in the Diocese of Pittsburgh.
Donna Novak, a sixth-grade teacher at St. Mary School in Uniontown, said she would be sure to do the biosphere project with her students. She said she and the other teachers were proud of the project and happy to show it off.
“Can you imagine how the kids would feel about it?” she asked.
Vera Painley, a teacher at Uniontown Area High School, said the DASH lessons helped “get the creative juices flowing.”
“I teach in the senior high, but a lot of the mechanisms and concepts of a lot of the lessons can be adjusted to my students,” Painley said.
“The biggest thing about this is the materials. You do not have to buy expensive things. People can bring the materials from home,” said Pam Gadd, a Uniontown Area High School teacher.
Paige Miller, a sixth-grade teacher at Lafayette School, said the biosphere, on the large scale that the teachers did, would be great for a science fair but she could do the project on a modified, smaller scale even in a corner of her classroom.
The teachers, 69 in all from Uniontown Area and Laurel Highlands school districts and the Diocese of Greensburg, concluded their training Friday.
Sandy White, a DASH instructor from Louisiana who worked with the kindergarten and first-grade teachers, guided her group through a project about decomposition that can be used at other grade levels just as effectively.
Various items like a plastic spoon, chicken bone, a wad of paper and a banana peel are tied into sections of a pair of pantyhose and their placement in the pantyhose is mapped for future reference. The pantyhose, with all its items intact, is buried outside and students make predictions about how long it might take for each item to decompose. They eventually uncover the pantyhose and study the results.
The methodology behind the activities and related classroom management were included in the instruction. Hallinen pointed out that the teacher institute also offered instruction on safety with all of the projects. For example, she said handling and hygiene are stressed if a classroom chooses a pet.
The sixth-grade group of teachers also launched “bottle rockets” in an open space outside the school. They filled plastic pop bottles with water, taped on cardboard wings and used a bicycle pump to inject enough air to send the bottles flying.The safety factor was in shielding those launching the bottles with a tarp and keeping others far enough away. DASH instructor Linda Bechtol, a teacher in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, said the lesson was in aerodynamics and rocket propulsion.
Alisa Steele, a teacher at Lafayette School and president of the Uniontown Area Education Association, said a number of Uniontown teachers had been traveling to DASH institutes for several years and using the lessons in their classrooms. She was pleased with the opportunity to bring the institute home.
Steele said the teachers with DASH training collaborate among themselves and with their colleagues and that the program has become popular in the district.
“The teachers are diverse, from guidance counselors to art to math teachers,” she said.
The lessons, she said, fit in well with the state’s academic standards, which, in part, focus on the process of learning.
Steele and her fellow teachers grouped in the fourth-grade class made clay pots from dirt they dug up outside and fired in a galvanized trash can. They also floated boats at Cucumber Falls in Ohiopyle and devised a mechanical digestive system from a funnel, rubber glove, paper towel roll and tape.
“We use a lot of duct tape,” said Jim Hope, a DASH instructor from Alabama.
Hope helped guide fifth-grade teachers through the building of simple machines that featured several concepts, including a pulley system that was meant to break eggs.
Rachel Hinish, a DASH instructor on leave from teaching in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, said for all the enthusiasm students show for the DASH projects, parents get just as interested.
“Another plus is the parents. There is such a change in parents’ attitude and they can replicate what we’re doing in class at home,” she said.