OVERVIEW

Activity Overview:

This lesson will combine technology and social studies to understand the role the compass has played in the discovery of the new world. They will look at three different types of compasses and use them on a scavenger hunt to navigate through it and then collect data from how effective they were. One of the compasses will be a micro bit that they will breakdown the process of making a compass and building the code for it. The students at the end of the lesson will talk about the pros and cons of the various compasses, what data they collected, which was most effective, how could we improve the others, and how far compasses have come from their invention.

Meta description

• Subject Area: Social Studies
• Grade Level : 6-8
• Computer Science Domains:
  • Data Analysis
• Computer Science Principles:
  • Testing and Refining Computational Artifacts
• Materials:
  • Micro:bit
• Considerations:
  • I talked with our STEM teacher and he gave me some pointers on how to teach the micro bit coding part of the lesson and suggested modeling it and pre programming the micro bits and then offering outside of class time to come in and build their own code for more one on one instruction.

Lesson Plan

Overview

This lesson will combine technology and social studies to understand the role the compass has played in the discovery of the new world. They will look at three different types of compasses and use them on a scavenger hunt to navigate through it and then collect data from how effective they were. One of the compasses will be a micro bit that they will breakdown the process of making a compass and building the code for it. The students at the end of the lesson will talk about the pros and cons of the various compasses, what data they collected, which was most effective, how could we improve the others, and how far compasses have come from their invention.

ASSESSMENT PRE/POST-TEST

1. Label the cardinal directions (East, South, West, North) and intermediate (Southwest, Northwest, Southeast, Northeast) on the compass rose below. You can use abbreviations if you would like.
2. How does a compass work?
3. What was/is a compass used for?
4. Why is the compass such an important technological discovery/invention? Give an example of something it was used for in history.

OBJECTIVES

1. Students will be able to label a compass rose with cardinal and intermediate directions.
2. Students will be able explain how a compass works by looking at the magnetic cores.
3. Students will be able to explain how the technology of the compass impacted the civilization of Mesoamerica.

CATCH/HOOK

The students will have a compass placed in front of them and asked to figure out which direction North is. For most kids, this will be their first time using a hand-held compass, so they will move around and manipulate it until they realize how it works.

ACTIVITY INSTRUCTIONS

1.    This lesson would start with the attention grabber and that would be placing a compass in front of each student and having them figure out which direction North is in the classroom.
   

2.    After they got a feel for North, we would locate the other cardinal directions – East, South, and West.  (Watch the first video link below on how a compass works)
   

a. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eup2J0oAq9Y
b. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq8s2SF17zY&t=27s 3. Once they had a feel for the compass and the cardinal directions, we would move onto the history aspect of this lesson by looking at the role the compass played in the age of exploration, along with the positive and negative impacts it had on the Spanish and the Incas and Aztec. We will watch Mankind Story of All of Us: Christopher Columbus accidental discovery of the new world video. a. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhb59zhlzPk&t=2630s 4. The students will break into groups of 6 and learn about the different compasses we have available to us today in class – there will be three (a traditional hand-held compass, a micro bit compass, and a compass on a smartphone) – and this is where we will breakdown how to make a micro bit compass (the micro bits will already have the compass on them but they will learn how to make the code as a class and be offered the chance to come after school to build the code themselves if they would like because each class will have around 50 kids since we are combining both sixth grade classes) a. We will break down the compass into a circle and label the cardinal directions and the degrees associated with them and then take it further by adding the intermediate directions and the degrees associated with those directions. b. Then we will move onto https://microbit.org/code/ and build the code as an entire class c. The students will then connect the battery packs to the micro bits and make sure that it is tracking the directions by moving around the library testing directions. d. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdNdLlyeFLs&t=168s 5. For here, the students will further divide into 3 groups of 2 and decide which group gets to use which compass 6. Once each group has subdivided into two per compass, they will start on the activity to collect data on the three compasses by going on a “scavenger hunt”. 7. There will be three different scavenger hunt areas for the different compass groups. There will be colored cones set up and the students will be asked questions like head Northeast towards the blue cone, once you are there, what direction would you need to go in order to make it to the yellow cone.
8. After the scavenger hunt, they will return to the library and compare their data/results on the compass they used for the scavenger hunt. 9. The students will do the post-test with the same pre-test questions, and additional questions on what was a good thing about their compass, a bad thing, and could the compass they used be improved and how. 10. The final activity will be a class discussion about the three compasses over the pros/cons/effectiveness/ease/accuracy and then move onto how they could be improved so everyone can see how/hear how the other compasses were.

Supplements

Any items in this section are the property & under the license of their respective owners.

REVIEW

The final activity will be a class discussion about the three compasses over the pros/cons/effectiveness/ease/accuracy and then move onto how they could be improved so everyone can see how/hear how the other compasses were.

STANDARDS