Kirk Beckendorf, a middle school teacher, joined researchers at the McMurdo Station in Antarctica to help maintain automatic weather stations. The lesson encourages pupils to track his travels around the region. They connect with the teacher through blog posts and better understand the land forms and weather conditions on the frozen tundra. 

 

Concepts

latitude and longitude, antarctica

Show More Show Less

Additional Tags

science

Show More Show Less

Instructional Ideas

• The teacher they are tracking completed his expedition in 2008; you can find his journal entries here: https://www.polartrec.com/member/kirk-beckendorf
• Select a current teacher to track in the same area if a research project is active there

Classroom Considerations

• Relies on prior knowledge of latitude and longitude
• Timeline of six weeks uses real-time data and only maps once-a-day maximum, thus only taking a few minutes; if students perform the activity using old data, you can complete it in a couple of hours total

Pros

• Connects scholars to a specific person to follow and track
• Highlights the differences in ice on water versus ice on land

Cons

• Instructions are specific to one teacher and one classroom, so you must make many adjustments for others to use it

Common Core

RST.6-8.3