Activity courtesy of C-PALMS, Florida’s platform for teacher resources. Click HERE for PDF. This version includes additional material inserted by ASEE’s eGFI Teachers editor.  

NOTE: For a 3-D prototype design challenge, please see Engineering is Elementary, from the Museum of Science, Boston, which developed a four-part unit that challenges students in grades 1 to 5 to build a hand-operated pollinator – or I Scream You Scream, Ringwood, Ill., second grade teacher and NSTA contributor Jeri Faber’s end-of-unit activity to design a pollinator for vanilla plants, which are grown away from natural pollinators to produce flavorful beans. 

For older elementary students, consider including Honeybee Mystery, a lesson from Oregon that focuses on Colony Collapse Disorder and a performance task that involves writing an advocacy letter to local, state, or federal legislators proposing solutions. 

Summary

Students in grades 3 to 5 learn about the engineering design process by making a 2-dimensional model (graphic illustration) of an apparatus that will pollinate a field.

Grade level: 4 (3-5)

Time: 2 hours

Learning objectives

Students will:

• create a 2-D model of a system to pollinate a “blacktop” size field of plants.
• keep careful records as they design, analyze, and modify the models based on the analysis.
• present the designs at an engineer conference/peer review session, discussing merits of their design, citing features of their design and how it would work in the real world.
• evaluate other designs from the point of view of the plants or farmer, identifying at least 2 positive impacts and 2 negative impacts over the course of the presentations.
• decide on the best solution to the problem of less natural pollination due to honeybee colony collapse and cite specific positive impacts (based on evidence) in support of the solution.
• gain a deeper understanding of pollination, its importance in the food chain, and its impact on living organisms.

Learning standards

Next Generation Science Standards

• Construct a model based on evidence to represent a proposed object or tool

Guiding Questions

• How do honeybees impact our lives?
• How can we do the job of honeybees?

Introduction/Motivation

In science class, you’ve been learning about the important role bees play in plant pollination. But what if there aren’t enough bees to do the job?Agricultural, mechanical, and electrical engineers design mechanical or hand pollination systems that can pollinate plants when insects are scarce, or to use on plants grown in greenhouses and special plants like vanilla that must be grown away from natural pollinators.

As junior graphic design engineers at the state Department of Agriculture, you’ve been called in by farmers to develop a pollination system that will help deal with the loss of honey bees due to colony collapse.

Materials

• Engineer Report—Automatic Pollinator [PDF] at the end of lesson—1 per student
• large white paper for official design—1 per team (18″ x 12″ construction paper works well)
• Hibiscus, tulip, or other flower with visible pollen cells—1 per student, if possible
• white paper to collect pollen cells—1 per student (coffee filters also work well)

Materials for teacher use:

• Engineer Design Process for 2-D (illustration) model [PDF]
• Honeybee Engineer Report – Automatic Pollinator [Word]
• Honeybee Automatic Pollinator Engineering Design Process Evaluation Rubric [Word]

Process

1. Ask students to make a list of the plants they eat, as many as they can write in 2 minutes. Then have them make a list of all the plants that are eaten for food by any animals, and the animal that eats that food. For example: grass—cow, corn—chicken, hay—sheep, etc. Give them a time limit (3 minutes), as nearly every plant is eaten for food by some animal.

2. Show the students some fruits and vegetables that we eat every day (apple, orange, tomato, etc.). Images of the fruits would also work. What is important is that the students are able to see the seeds in the fruit. If there are seeds, there were flowers! Have the students work in teams of 4 to highlight the plants on their lists that have flowers. Most will not realize that many of the plants we eat are seed-bearing.

3. Show a video or image of bee pollinating a plant. Some options are:

• U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service Insects & Pollinators site, or USDA-Forest Service Bee Basics guide.
• PBS produced a video about the honey bee colony collapse called Silence of the Bees. An introduction to the video is available for free on their website.
• For older students, introduce these two short videos address the role that bees play in nature and about why bees are disappearing. The first
  video gives an overview of the importance of bees. The second video discusses about the sudden and mysterious drop in honey bee populations (Colony Collapse Disorder) and what might be causing bees to disappear:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdfMkr1pXrM
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P7cYGjI8Fw

4. Review plant reproduction. Give each student a flower with visible pollen cells and a white piece of paper. Hibiscus are easy to find in Florida and are good for “dissection.”

5. Challenge the students to collect some pollen on the white paper. Don’t tell them how to do it—that’s part of the challenge. They should already know that the yellow, grain-like substances are the pollen cells.

6. Tell students that most flowers cannot pollinate themselves—the pollen from one flower must go to a different flower to be effective. Some flowers have both male and female structures in one flower, but they still need pollen from another flower in order to reproduce. In most cases, a flower cannot use its own pollen to reproduce; it must get it from another flower. That’s where honeybees and other insects come in.

Teacher’s tip: This would be a good spot for a paired reading lesson on “Honeybee Colony Collapse” from National Geographic for Kids.

7. Ask the students the following:

What will happen if we lose the majority of the honeybees? You might consider making a class flow chart, such as:

Who will this affect? (All animals) How? (The whole food chain depends on plants.)

How can we get the pollen that you collected on your white paper to another flower so that it can be used by the new flower for reproduction? Talk to your team and begin discussing ideas.

Introduce Challenge Question: How could you design a machine to do the job of pollinating the flowers on a field the size of our school blacktop?

Handouts

• Engineer Design Process for 2-D (illustration) model [PDF]
• Honeybee Engineer Report – Automatic Pollinator [Word]
• Honeybee Automatic Pollinator Engineering Design Process Evaluation Rubric [Word]

Investigate: What will the teacher do to give students an opportunity to develop, try, revise, and implement their own methods to gather data?

Teacher note: This Challenge asks students to make a 2-dimensional graphic illustration of their design (a scientific illustration, complete with labels and other helpful information to explain how their design will work). Students are the “initial design” team. They draw and label their design, get feedback from their peers (other designers), then modify the design, taking into account all the feedback received. This is still a “real-world” engineering application. Many design engineers never put their hands on the 3-D version of their design. Some examples are car design engineers and architects, who use computer-aided design tools instead of 3-D prototypes.

Because the process of designing a 2-dimensional model is a bit different, the Engineer/Design Challenge Process for 2-dimensional Models flow chart is slightly different from other Engineering Design Challenges.

1. Explain to the students that they are junior graphic design engineers at the State Department of Agriculture. [You can put real state and location, such as the Florida State Department of Agriculture in Talahasee.] They’ve been called in by farmers to develop a pollination system that will help deal with the loss of honey bees due to colony collapse. Tell them that after all the groups develop a possible solution, we will have a review session to present all the solutions. After the presentations, there will be a time for modifying the designs before the final designs are due.

2. Explain the Engineering/Design Challenge Process for 2-dimensional Models (refer to chart of graphic, if posted).

Phase 1. Explain that we are now in Phase 1: Identifying the Problem. In this stage, engineers identify the problem and any things they need to consider when they design their solution. These considerations are part of the “specifications” for the solution. After they identify the specifications, they brainstorm possible solutions. Engineers usually brainstorm many solutions before they settle on the best one to build. Stress that they shouldn’t stop at the first idea they get—they should think of several ideas before choosing the one that best fits the specifications. After they decide on a solution, engineers make a drawing of their idea so they can begin to work out the details of the design (material needed, size, etc.). In many cases, they would build a model of their design, then test the model.

3. Point out that in this case, though, we are the initial design team. We will be making 2-dimensional models. This means we won’t actually be building a prototype. We will be drawing our design, getting feedback from our peers (other designers), then modifying the design, taking into account all the feedback received. The goal is to clearly communicate how the design works.

4. Show them Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches of an ornithopter in the 1480s. Although da Vinci drew very detailed plans, he lacked the technology to build a prototype. However, we are able to understand his plans because of the details he left in his journal.

5. Distribute copies of the Engineer Report—Automatic Pollinator (this can also be done as part of a science notebook). Even though they are working as a team, each student completes his/her own report. (See Accommodations, below, for options)

6. Guide the class in developing the question: How could you design a machine to do the job of pollinating the flowers on a field the size of our school blacktop?

7. With the students, brainstorm a list of considerations for the design. Some possibilities include:

• The pollinator has to collect pollen from one flower’s stamen and carry it, placing it on the pistil of another flower. Remind them of the earlier “pollen collecting” activity.
• The pollinator cannot damage the flower.
• The pollinator must be powered by hand.
• The pollinator must be operated/carried by one person.
• The pollinator must pollinate a field the size of our blacktop (or playground, parking lot, etc.) in a reasonable amount of time. For this, you might decide to take the students out to the “field area” and let them “walk their designs” to see approximately how fast they would need to move, how much area they’d have to cover, etc. Then have students come up with a consensus on an amount of time that would be “reasonable” for your selected field.

8. Tell students that, as Project Head, you cannot give them ideas, but you can help clarify. One idea is to tell them that you will only be able to ask questions, not answer any. For example, if a student asks if you think their design will work, respond with, “Does it meet our considerations?”

9. Set an amount of time for the initial designs (one class meeting time is sufficient). Remind students that the plans should be very detailed so that someone else could pick up their plan and understand it.

10. Students meet in their teams to begin brainstorming and complete the rest of Phase 1 on the Engineer Report. They don’t get the “official” design paper until they’ve brainstormed several ideas and chosen the one they want to draw. As students are ready to begin to draw their design, have them come to you to describe their idea. Ask: “How does your design do the bee’s job?”

Assessment    

Formative assessment—Does the student understand the pollination process? Does your design clearly communicate your idea? How can you make it clearer? Educative assessment

11. As you approve ideas, give students the larger construction paper to use for their official design. Remind them to use words to describe what each part of the design is doing.

Filed under: Class Activities, Grades K-5, Lesson Plans

Tags: Agricultural Engineering, Class Activities, crops, design challenge, Grades K-5, honey bee, Lesson Plan, Mechanical engineering, pollinator