If you pop into a science class at Chapin you may see students conducting experiments in a lab or discovering new concepts, using power tools or working through class content collaboratively. In Anna Mello’s Class 7 science course, you’ll find all of these and more as her students don their engineering hats and begin building hydroponic gardens.
Ms. Mello, Head of Middle School Science, introduced her Class 7 students to this project during a lesson about the engineering design process. She asked them to think of themselves as engineers and discuss what it is that engineers do and what skills they use. She walked her classes through the mindset of an engineer as they broke down a problem and worked through solutions. To test their new knowledge, Ms. Mello provided them with data from well known sources, like the UN and WHO, and asked them to assess the information using their new toolset. This led to a discussion about land use in the U.S. and how most of the food consumed in the Northeast isn’t locally grown. She then posed a new question: Can you come up with solutions to grow more food on less land?
Class 7 decided the answer was vertical gardens, although in this initial discussion they had yet to learn this terminology. They conceptualized the same solution that engineers have spent years developing. Following their discussion, Ms. Mello shared a video of engineers at MIT proposing a similar solution, which they named “City Farm,” to kick start the class’ research on vertical farming.
Ms. Mello then assigned the students to groups and gave them their project prompt. “You are an agricultural engineer who has been tasked with designing a small-scale vertical garden that supports three plants using as little horizontal space as possible."
Before sending her students off to build their gardens, Ms. Mello had one more lesson to share. A key part of engineering, she explained, is understanding that failure is expected and is a necessary part of the process to find the best solution. To successfully complete this project, they needed a willingness to try despite knowing that their first designs would likely not be the final. In engineering, failure is seen as a positive — something to learn from and build off of, providing a foundation for innovation. With that wisdom, Class 7 migrated from the lab to the Greenhouse.
There, Ms. Mello had set up a variety of tools to help students construct their gardens and provided access to large sinks for testing their designs. Each group of seventh graders endeavored to build a working hydroponic garden with a functioning water distribution system that is powered by a water pump. As groups took their designs from paper to reality, it was astonishing to see how many solutions they created for the same prompt.
No two gardens were alike in their construction — the way in which they were built or their finished designs. Some groups chose to use piping that stacked their three plants vertically. Others approached their garden by utilizing basins which some chose to hang one atop the other. In another garden, students created a water basin in which they situated a floating garden. Others piped water lengthwise to a series of hanging pots.
Team by team they created and tested their gardens with each encountering different problems. Some needed to remodel because of stability issues, others discovered the water didn’t reach all of the plants and needed to restructure or streamline their internal piping. Each set of students tackled their assignment with enthusiasm and patience. They utilized available resources and tools, including PVC pipes, wire, plastic containers, lightweight foam, a soldering iron, a hand saw, a power drill, duct tape and a hot glue gun. Design and testing was not the end of the road for this project. Class 7 carefully documented their process and results, graphing data collected over the course of their work, writing step-by-step instructions for recreating their hydroponic gardens and drafting a presentation pitch to “sell” their designs to classmates.
This multi-layered and complex project helped Ms. Mello’s students develop a wide breadth of scientific skills and foster self-confidence and a comfort with failure as a part of the process. With these new skills, Chapin’s Class 7 students are more prepared than ever to tackle challenges that come their way.
