I am so excited.  This week we started our next STEM unit.  This unit is titled Mariana Becomes a Butterfly and is about agricultural engineering.  This unit is about a girl who lives in the Dominican Republic.  She has a plant that a friend brought to her from Hawaii. The plant won't grow berries like it did when she first got it.  She goes to her aunt for help because her aunt is an agricultural engineer.  They discover that the plant is not getting pollinated because the insect that pollinated the plant is not in the Dominican Republic.  So Mariana creates and redesigns a hand pollinator so she can pollinate the plant.  She is successful and her plant has berries again.

On the first day we spent some time reviewing the different types of engineers we had learned about this year.  Then we discussed and came up with a definition of an agricultural engineer.
Then we spent some time learning about the climate of the Dominican Republic using the following link.  video  We read the story together as a class and discussed what happened.  Then we made diagrams of the parts of a flower and their jobs.

On the 2nd day we discussed the advantages and disadvantages of using a hand pollinator.  We watched a video showing us how to hand pollinate and plant. video Then we used the Phoster App to make posters of the vocabulary words for the story.

Today in the STEM lesson we used an inner and outer circle question strategy to answer comprehension questions about the story.

 Then we reviewed the Engineering Design Process and the steps you follow in this process.  They made flow maps to show the steps Mariana went through to solve her pollination problems using the Popplet App.