Authentic Work Keeps Students Engaged

Students at De Portola Middle School in Brenda Mueller’s 7th grade class are working on understanding landslides and learning how to stabilize hillsides. They first learned about the geology of the California area and discovered the location of fault lines (they were not given a map of the fault lines, but rather investigated through maps that showed depth and historical information of where most likely the fault lines were located). Upon that understanding, they were shown a clip of a real landslide that happened in the Southern California area due to a train and basic geology of the area. They were then tasked to recommend how to stabilize the area. Instead of just googling the information, they were given real materials to test out their theories and create prototypes. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are encouraging teachers to be facilitators of information, rather than the gatekeepers. This work provided students the opportunity to do relevant, critical thinking.