Effective uses of water: A mathematics, science and technology approach to understanding water transportation and how boats float

In second grade, students are provided with the opportunity to develop an awareness of water. Students are responsible for understanding that objects are made up of different materials which determine some specific properties of that object, such as sinking and floating. These second-grade students will investigate floating and sinking with a variety of materials and inquiry-based experiments. With an understanding of floating and sinking, students will further investigate water transportation and understanding how boats float.; This unit was implemented in a diverse middle-class suburban community. The school is located approximately twenty miles east of a major northeastern city. The class participating in this unit began with twenty students; eleven boys and nine girls. Throughout the unit, the class make-up changed three times. At the conclusion of the unit there were nineteen students; nine boys and ten girls. Of those nineteen students, I was able to assess eighteen.; The unit is approximately twenty class days and contains nine major goals. The overall goal of this unit is for students to demonstrate an understanding of how boats float, with focus on buoyancy, capacity and cargo. The students will apply the concepts in this unit to design and construct a small boat capable of floating across a basin of water carrying a load of cargo. The students had specifications and constraints when completing the design project.; Prior to the unit, students lacked familiarity with the design challenge approach. They never completed a design portfolio before. The amount of work early in the unit posed difficult to most students. As the unit progressed and more information was taught, students believed that the design portfolio and science journals were a necessary component to their final design challenge. The student's mastery of the learning objectives of this unit was successfully demonstrated by their completion of the design challenge.; At the completion of the unit, student's overall attitude toward science learning had improved. Students agreed that working together in groups was beneficial to their learning when they were able to conduct themselves in a respectable manner. Students demonstrated a strong understanding of the importance of exploring, observing, discovering and describing science phenomena. Each student was able to create a successful design project meeting all specifications and constraints.