Infant Incubator
Storyline Overview
How does the matter around me behave and interact?
The chemistry storyline begins with students viewing world maps depicting both infant prematurity and infant mortality. The students will generate questions to better understand why there is a disparity in the number of preterm births and infant death in different countries. The students will identify that preterm babies need to be kept warm in incubators in order to survive. The students will generate and answer questions in order to define terms such as heat, temperature, and chemical reactions. The students will identify that chemical reactions can be used to generate heat by observing an elephant toothpaste reaction. In their quest to better understand and explain what happens when chemicals combine, students ask questions about lesson phenomenon and develop investigations about, chemical reactions, solutions, water, and more to answer their questions. By designing and conducting experiments, and then collecting and analyzing data from those experiments, students address a variety of math standards. Students also address a range of ELA standards by planning and conducting experiments as well as providing written and oral explanations of experiment outcomes. Each lesson builds upon the understandings gained and questions developed during the previous lesson. At the end of the unit, students are challenged to use all of their newly acquired knowledge of chemical interactions to solve an engineering challenge based on the real world problem of harnessing chemical energy to create an incubator for preterm infants.
Teaching science using a storyline provides a coherent path toward building disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts, piece by piece, anchored in students' own questions. Together, what students figure out helps explain the unit's phenomena or solve the problems they have identified.
Summary of curriculum
Storylining Chemical Reactions
Performance Expectations
- MS-PS1-1 Develop models to describe the atomic composition of simple molecules and extended structures.
- MS-PS1-2 Analyze and interpret data on the properties of substances before and after the substances interact to determine if a chemical reaction has occurred.
- MS-PS1-4 Develop a model that predicts and describes changes in particle motion, temperature, and state of a pure substance when thermal energy is added or removed.
- MS-PS1-5 Develop and use a model to describe how the total number of atoms does not change in a chemical reaction and thus mass is conserved.
- MS-PS1-6 Undertake a design project to construct, test, and modify a device that either releases or absorbs thermal energy by chemical processes.
- MS-ETS1-1 Define the criteria and constraints of a design problem with sufficient precision to ensure a successful solution, taking into account relevant scientific principles and potential impacts on people and the natural environment that may limit possible solutions.
- MS-ETS1-2 Evaluate competing design solutions using a systematic process to determine how well they meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.
- MS-ETS1-3 Analyze data from tests to determine similarities and differences among several design solutions to identify the best characteristics of each that can be combined into a new solution to better meet the criteria for success.
- MS-ETS1-4 Develop a model to generate data for iterative testing and modification of a proposed object, tool, or process such that an optimal design can be achieved.
- MS-LS1-5 Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for how environmental and genetic factors influence the growth of organisms.
Lesson Plans
See links below for lesson plans for this module.