FCL is so inspirational for educators because it designed with the aim of gaining 21-century skills with 6 different learning zones. Many schools in Turkey are creating new learning environments. And all of these schools take inspiration from Future Classroom Lab (FCL). We have selected a lesson plan prepared as a FCL scenario from within Scientix Repository in order to give an idea to the schools that prepare new learning environments in our district. The name of the lesson plan is “ Growing plastic & new life for plastic Future Classroom Scenario” and we applied it in a school.
This scenario is part of the BLOOM School Box, which consists of a set of five Future Classroom Scenarios combining bioeconomy into science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects. In this way, we had data on which environments we need for STEM and inquiry-based learning. This lesson plan is prepared for students aged 11-18. There are articles, experiments, worksheets, video links and evaluation questions in the lesson plan.
We had a detailed interview with the teacher who used the lesson plan in the classroom and how to apply each step of the lesson plan. First, the teacher introduces the topic of plastic pollution with students. Lesson plan has articles to help you with the subject. The teacher explained that the main idea is to know plastics well, catalogue them, and recycle them. The teacher completed a project with her students to understand the awareness of plastics for people at school with the help of a survey. So that students had a very effective brainstorming at the first lesson. Also, students created creative objects from plastic waste. At the same time, students formed a hypothesis about environmental problems. And students have tested their hypotheses with the help of the articles in the plan. In this way, students were provided to learn scientific methods.
With the experiments in the plan, density differences of plastics, which labeled different numbers, were observed. such as the statistics in the articles or the comparison of the decimal numbers in the lesson plan meet the mathematics step. The students noted the results of this experiment by filling in the tables in the worksheet. Evaluation questions at the end of the table, show us that the students understand the results of the experiment, or not. We think that teachers have problems in selecting evaluation questions after an experiment. So that this example is very useful for us to share. The main problem to apply this lesson plan was the unadequate chemistry lab in the school.
Also subjects such as bioplastic and bioeconomics are included in the lesson plan. In this way, the students were informed about the environmental problems which our world will be going thorugh in the coming years, and the solutions offered for these problems.
Finally, students are asked to make any designs with 3D printers. Thus, the technology and engineering steps are completed. Even if there is no 3D printer in the school which will use the lesson plan, a video link is added to plan. So that the students have an idea about the 3D printers. The lesson plan is supported by questions to make brainstorming about what students can print with 3D printers. Creativity is supported with the question “What will you like to print yourself if everything is possible?”
One of the secondary schools in our district plans to create a stem lab. So that we decided to share our experience with this school about the lesson plan “Growing plastic & new life for plastic Future Classroom Scenario ”. This plan is important because it has a Future Classroom Scenario. Future Classroom is a very useful and enthusiastic place for educators who wants to renew their learning areas. So we gave information about Scientix and how to search materials in Scientix portal. We shared the details of the lesson plan. We disscussed which materials should be available to implement such a lesson plan.
You can also check this lesson plan from: https://bloom-bioeconomy.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/BLOOM-LS-TEAM5-Growing-plastic-online.pdf
Mehmet Eyüp Taş