Abstract:

This learning scenario focuses on the economic use of resources and the student’s commitment to the growth and development process of an organism. In the process, students are expected to raise awareness about water conservation and to follow the growth and development process of a plant. Students are asked to create a design product that will enable them to measure the moisture in the soil of the plant by coding with the help of the mBlock – coding robot. Students will use the knowledge gained from science, information technology and mathematics lessons while creating the design product. The aim here is to make students realize that different disciplines can be integrated and used in daily life. With the learning scenario, while examining the growth and development process of a plant. It is aimed to contribute to the efficient use of water, which is one of the important resources in our world, by coding.

Exordium

Throughout our life, we obtain almost all of our needs directly or indirectly from nature. Considering this interaction with nature, we need to draw attention to the sustainability of the environment and the use of natural resources. Unfortunately, in our consumption habits that we have acquired to meet our needs, we often do not remember the environmental dimension, but we ignore it by thinking anthropocentrically. In order to be able to think a little more ecocentrically (environmentally centered), in order to eliminate this deficiency, it is of great importance that we are knowledgeable about environmental protection, and we reflect the awareness of water and water conservation, which is one of our natural resources, to our behaviours.

Real-life questions

We unknowingly use many disciplines together to solve a problem in our daily life. While teaching at school, we should not ignore interdisciplinary learning. With this learning scenario, it has been tried to be used by integrating Science, Information Technologies, Mathematics and Art lessons. While following the development process of a plant with Science, the student will be able to measure how much water the plant needs with coding in information technologies. Will be able to gain awareness about water saving with small mathematical calculations.

• Can you determine the water requirement of a plant by coding?

• What can the hygrometer be used for in daily life?

• In which parts of your house do you save the most water?

• What is needed to grow a plant?

The goals and result of the event:

Science

• Track the evolution of a creature

• Contribute to the efficient use of resources.

Informatics (ICT)

• Use mBlock

• Code with Arduino

• Measure the moisture of your soil with a hygrometer.

Maths

• Compare the humidity values measured from your soil with the hygrometer.

• Solve a simple math problem.

Materials:

A bowl of water, 2 LEDs, 1 soil moisture sensor, 1 Arduino and USB connection cable,1 breadboard, Jumper cables are both male-male / male-male and male-female / female-male, A computer with mBlock software installed.

Activities used in the event:

Engagement: The problem situation that the teacher brought to the classroom is read by the students and upon this, their ideas about water saving are taken from the students. The students, who were divided into groups by the teacher, read the “What can you do to use water more efficiently at home? They sought an answer to the question.

Problem Status:

3 out of 4 of our world is made up of water. Less than 1 percent of the available water on the earth’s surface is suitable for ecosystem and human use. Water, which is one of the basic substances for life, should be protected in our country as in the whole world. Our country is not a water-rich country as it is thought to be. With increasing water usage in parallel with the growing population, Turkey is moving towards becoming poor water unfortunately. 70% of the water is used in agriculture in our country. Several studies have been done to raise awareness for the use of water from Turkey. How would you like to do a little work to reduce the use of water?

Exploration: Students who were divided into groups were expected to put forward a hypothesis regarding the problem situation. The tasks to be tackled by students are:

1. Can water be saved while growing plants?

2. Create a hypothesis that answers the question.

3. Design an experimental protocol to test the hypothesis.

In the section “Water Saving Indoors – Shower Power”, the students who developed hypotheses were given how many gallons of water per minute the normal and economical shower head consumed. They were asked to solve the following math problems. The aim here is to make the student aware of water saving by drawing attention to the excessive water consumption by using mathematics discipline. At this stage, it was tried to integrate the course with mathematics.

Explain: The teacher asked the students to watch the video titled “25 Liter” by explaining the growth and development process of the plants. In this way, students were made aware of water-saving. Students were asked to prepare posters for water-saving using Canva. Students were asked to take care of a plant and examine its growth and development process. In this process, they learned what a plant needs to grow. Students were expected to save water while growing the plant they took care of. In this way, it is aimed to follow the growth and development process of a living thing and to raise awareness about water saving.

Elaboration: Here, the integration of the course with technology is provided. Students will learn how to code with Arduino over mBlock. The students were introduced to mBlock and the coding steps were taught. During the process, coding steps and coding materials were given to the students. The students were expected to perform the coding steps. For the hygrometer to work, students need to develop an algorithm on mBlock. Students have enabled the hygrometer to make some inferences by trying various algorithms. Students who passed these steps experimented with the soil of a real plant. The data obtained as a result of the experiments when the soil was dry and moist were noted in a tabular form. At the end of the lesson, the students who created their algorithms were expected to be smart farmers.

Evaluation: Students’ product and process evaluation was made. Students presented their prototypes to their classmates through posters they prepared on Canva. The studies of the students were evaluated by peer evaluation with the rubrics prepared by the teacher.