STE(A)M IT INTEGRATED LESSON PLAN TEMPLATE

Title

Fighting against deforestation and deliberate wildfires

Authors

M. Isabel Blanco Pumar

Javier Ramos Sancha

Summary
Deliberate wildfires have been causing severe and extreme damage to our forests and to our planet.
Recent examples are the Amazon wildfire and the fires that have burned many areas of land around
Spain. Forests are vital resources in regulating the climate, they are the shelter of a vast range of
animals and plants and they produce the oxygen we breathe.
Due to fires and deforestation forests are under threat. This learning scenario is aimed at raising
awareness among students working from an interdisciplinary angle, researching and talking to
experts about the topic, creating a campaign to fight against deliberate wildfires and developing
some robotic solutions to detect and prevent them.
Licenses

Attribution CC BY. This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even
commercially, if they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered.
Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.

Subject (s)
Please list in detail the subjects taught in this lesson and briefly explain why specific subjects and teachers were chosen,
including the link of the non-STEM subjects and their use in improving the lesson.

The learning scenario will take a cross-curricular approach. It will involve the following subjects:
STEM subjects:
Science: Deforestation is one of the topics covered in the Science curriculum and it's the base for our
project.
Technology (ICT, Coding and Robotics). Robotics develops problems solving skills and critical thinking.
Students need to create and code a device as a solution to detect and prevent fires.

NON-STEM subjects:
Spanish. Students will need to learn about planning interviews to be able to talk to an expert and
gather information for the project.

Art. Artistic skills are important when we are designing a campaign to promote change and raise
awareness about a world problem.

The work presented in this document has received funding from the European Union’s ERASMUS+ programme project
STE(A)M IT (Grant agreement 612845-EPP-1-2019-1- BE-EPPKA3-PI-FORWARD), coordinated by European Schoolnet
(EUN). The content of the document is the sole responsibility of the organizer and it does not represent the opinion of the
European Union or the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency, which are not responsible for any use that might
 STE(A)M IT PROVISIONAL INTEGRATED LESSON PLAN

Teachers were selected according to the areas we considered important for our project.

Real- life questions

Through this learning scenario students will learn about forests and their impact on our planet and
how forests are suffering from fires deliberately produced by the human kind. Students will try to
come out with answers to real-life questions as the ones that follow:
● Why are forests and trees so important?
● How do forests’ destruction affect our lives and our planet?
● How can we fight against deforestation and fires?
● How can we raise awareness among the population to prevent deliberate fires?
● What solutions can we come up with to detect and prevent fires? Can robots help us detect
and prevent fires?

Aims of the lesson

Students will:
● Explore the role of forests and trees on the Earth.
● Understand how the deforestation and the wildfires can affect people’s lives.
● Raise awareness about the consequences of deliberate wildfire among the population.
● Design, build and test a robotic solution to detect and prevent fires.

Connection to STEM careers

With this learning scenario, students will have the chance to work on tasks and develop skills related
with some STEM careers as the ones that follow:

● Environmental scientist

● Biologist
● Analyst
● Programmer

Age of students

10-11 year old

Time
Preparation time:
3 hours to prepare activities in each subject with the teachers involved in the scenario.
Teaching time:
● Preparation: 45 minutes
● STEM Subject 1: 1 hour and 40 minutes

2
 STE(A)M IT PROVISIONAL INTEGRATED LESSON PLAN

● STEM Subject 2: 50 minutes

● STEM Subject 3/non-STEM subject: 1 hour and 30 minutes
● STEM Subject 4: 2 hours
Teaching resources (material & online tools)
Materials:
● Construction paper
● Pencils, crayons, felt-tips, scissors, glue
● Computers
● Sodium hydrogen carbonate / baking soda
● A glass container
● Pondweed or a similar waterplant
● Mbot robots
● Internet

Online tools:
● Padlet
● Mblock
● Skype
● Google Forms

21st century skills

This lesson plan will enhance among the students the following skills, defined as 21 st century skills:

Creativity: Students will need to show their creativity when designing their advertising campaign
against deliberate wildfires and for the preservation of forests. They will also have to show their
creative skills when developing solutions to prevent fires.
Communication: Students will have to present their solutions to the rest of the classmates and share
their ideas with the different experts.
Collaboration: Students will have to work in pairs and teams to discuss and debate about the
importance of forests and trees and they will need to cooperate to create different adverts and
products related with the topic.
ICT Literacy: students will use different tools to find information, to record their ideas and to report
their findings. They will also use Scratch and other coding tools to develop solutions for fire
detection.

Lesson Plan
The implementation of integrated STEM teaching and learning is facilitated by the use of specific
pedagogical approaches (PBL, IBL, etc). In order to facilitate the research done by the teachers and
the design of activities by teachers, a selection of such approaches is presented in Annex 1.
Maintaining Annex 1 in the Learning Scenario and citing where necessary is mandatory.

Name of activity Procedure Time

st
1 Lesson
Brainstorming 30 min
The teacher writes the question ‘Why are trees and forests
and discussion
important in our world?’ on the board.
Students discuss the questions in groups using the cooperative
technique 1-2-4. Once they have finished, they sum up their main

3
 STE(A)M IT PROVISIONAL INTEGRATED LESSON PLAN

ideas on a Padlet and we comment the notes with the whole

class.

Discussion and 20 min

Afterwards we watch the following video about Wildfires and we
preparation for
ask students for the main causes of forest destruction.
the next lesson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hghT1W33cY
We finish the lesson with the question: What can we do to prevent
deforestation and wildfires?

2nd Lesson
STEM Subject 1 Science

Science Students will do an experiment during this lesson in order to 50

Experiment observe how plants produce oxygen. The activity goal is to minutes
understand why trees and forests are important in our lives.
The experiment is explained on the next link:
https://www.saps.org.uk/secondary/teaching-resources/190-
using-pondweed-to-experiment-with-photosynthesis

To finish the lesson we will watch a video about deforestations and

its effects.
Rainforest Deforestation and its Effects - YouTube

3rd Lesson
STEM Subject 2 Arts and crafts 50 min
STEM Subject 2 Brainstorming about ideas of what a good poster is.

Create pairs for working.

'Chatting time' to have clear ideas about how to create the poster
and what they are going yo include.

Developing the poster.

Exhibition for other School community members.

Learning They will create posters to raise awareness of the problems of the fires, how to
products avoid them and their consequences.

4th Lesson

4
 STE(A)M IT PROVISIONAL INTEGRATED LESSON PLAN

Spanish 1h 30 min
STEM Subject
3/non-STEM
subject

STEM Subject
3/non-STEM
The students will watch the following video at the same time they
subject
are completing a KWL chart. In the first column K (What did you
know about the topic?); W (What do you want to learnt?);
https://youtu.be/3KMv8casJuY

With all the aspects they wrote at the W column they will create
questions for an interview with a firefighter, who the teacher has
invited for a talk.

At the end they will complete the L column (What have you learnt
along the lesson?)

5th Lesson
STEM Subject Technology and Robotics 2 hours
4/non-STEM
subject
STEM Subject Students will have to develop a solution using Mbots to detect and
4/non-STEM prevent fires. They will code different sensors and add-ons (like
subject the temperature sensor, the gas sensor, the humidity sensor, the
ultrasound sensor…)

The idea is to present their idea to a local Fablab so they can help
us to adapt the best Mbot solution to Arduino using IOT (Internet
of Things). Arduino will allow us to monitor the data from different
areas of the forest through the Internet.
Learning Device with different sensors programme to detect fires.
products

5
 STE(A)M IT PROVISIONAL INTEGRATED LESSON PLAN

Assessment
There will be an assessment process which will start at the beginning of the project with a thinking
routine.
Also there will be a Formative Assessment everyday to check and talk about how the learning process
is working.
And finally we will assess all the project products by a rubric. The rubric will be given at the beginning
of the project.
Initial assessment
It will be done during a short assembly using the technique Think - Share - Pair. Using questions like:

● Do you think fires are good ir vas for the environment and why?
● How can we prevent the fires?
● Is there anything you can do with your hands to fight against fires?

Formative evaluation

Every day at the end of each lesson the students will have five minutes to write down their learning
diary by using the following questions:

● What have we done today?

● What problems did we have? How did we solve them?
● How can I use what I learnt today?

Final assessment

We will use a rubric to assess the products created. Some of the criteria that will be taken into
account are: creativity, effort and participation, usefulness, coding, prototype, etc.

Student feedback

Students will report their feedback about the learning scenario with a Google Form where they will
have to assess the lessons, sharing their opinion about different points (collaboration, peer review,
use of technology, etc.) and their involvement in the goals’ achievement. They will also report what
they liked the most and what the least.

Teacher feedback

When teachers finish the lesson it has to report some feedback by answering the following questions:
● Was the learning process easy or hard for the students?
● Did the students achieve the learning targets?
● Do you think we need to change any aspects of the lesson plan?
● How will you consider to continue with this learning process?

6
STE(A)M IT PROVISIONAL INTEGRATED LESSON PLAN