Bergen County Technical High School, Teterboro, N.J., 9^th grade biology, Mission Leader, Ben Norton

The Plan as it was presented to students:

The Bergen Tech freshman Biology class will be working on the Mars 2030 project from the aspect of how to sustain quality life on Mrs. The students will look at what the perfect community would be like. They will design a biosphere to accommodate that community, develop a community flag, and create holidays celebrating Air, Water, and Soil and their roles in sustaining life.

There will be 5 parts to the project:
 

The voyage to Mars activity
The What is a Community? Activity
The Fact Finding Activity
The Project Planning Activity
The Evaluation Activity

1. The instructor reads the Classified Government Document to the class as the class reads along

2. The class discusses different aspects of the story including:

3. Each student creates a list answering the first question, What are the 10 most important items to bring from Earth to Mars?
 

The instructor goes from student to student collecting one item from each to create a master list on the board until all possible items on the students' lists are included.

The class then cuts the list down to 10 buy first, having a student pick an item on the board that should be eliminated and explain the reason why and then having the class vote on the item's elimination from the list.

The same procedure is used for the remaining 2 critical questions. The result is one well thought out, class generated list of items and people to send to Mars.

II.  Community Activity

2. Students are assigned individual questions to take back to their table and begin to answer them for several minutes.
 

Students take turns at the front of the room running brainstorming sessions about their questions with their other students.

After a student is finished his/her brainstorming session, s/he finishes the assigned question and enters the answer into the computer.

The result is on paper about our community written by the entire class.

III.  Fact Finding Activity

As a homework assignment students explore the internet and collect 10 web sites.

Students record 10 facts about Mars.

Students read their lists to the class.

Any student that records a fact that no other student recorded, receives 5 extra credit points

IV.  Project Planning Activity

The project consists of three teams:

The Video Team: This team will plan the video recording of the village newscasts. Parts of the project include writing the script, designing the costumes, collecting the props, and filming the video.

The Village Model Team: This team will design the model, collect the materials, and construct the model.

The Art Team: This team will design and create the background for the video, a drawing of the village, a drawing of the festival square center, a community flag.

After presentation of the project at Ramapo College on May 20, 2000 each student will construct a letter to the teacher explaining the parts of the project s/he liked best and what parts s/he found most educational. The student will also describe in detail everything s/he did for the project and why the work completed by the student deserves an A for the overall project grade.