Problem-Based Science Lessons
The Problem-Based Learning series will engage your students in scenarios that represent real-world science in all its messy, thought provoking glory. The scenarios prompt students to work together on analyzing problems, asking questions, posing hypotheses, and constructing solutions.
A Pig’s Tale
Grade: 3rd
Content Connection: Science
Using problem-based learning, this curriculum allows students to work in teams, think critically and analyze, and centers on student learning to answer the question, “how does a farmer help a pig grow from two pounds to two-hundred seventy pounds in six months?” Present the problem first and take a short time or a whole semester to answer the question. You can even take a Virtual Field Trip to a Nebraska Pig Farm!
Lesson One
This lesson introduces students to the care pig farmers provide for pigs, teaches that pigs need air, space, food, water, and shelter to survive, and introduces students to the life cycle of a pig.
Lesson Two
Students will communicate the evidence of the inheritance and variation of traits by developing a model to build their own pig.
Lesson Three
Students will analyze the nutritional needs of animals by creating a model of a balanced diet for a pig to explore the organization of the monogastric digestive system.
Lesson Four
Students will build a pig barn and discover farmers raise pigs in barns to protect them from disease, predators, and weather.
Vocabulary
Consider using these models to encourage learning vocabulary for each lesson.
This resource is supported by the
A Pig’s Tale
Grade: High School
Content Connection: Science
Using problem-based learning, this curriculum allows students to work in teams, think critically, and centers on student learning to answer the question, “how does a farmer help a pig grow from two pounds to two-hundred seventy pounds in six months?” Present the problem first and take a short time or a whole semester to answer the question. You can even take a Virtual Field Trip to a Nebraska Pig Farm!
Lesson One
Students will analyze pork production and products by diagramming cuts of meat and discussing how those cuts affect customers.
Lesson Two
Students will participate in an Escape Box scenario to learn how grouping piglets and raising them in farrowing barns enhances their chance to survive and reproduce.
Lesson Three
Students develop a model to explain how enzymes affect the digestive system of a pig as they grow through transitional stage of milk to solid food.
Lesson Four
Students will communicate the evidence of the inheritance and variation of traits by developing a model to build their own pig.
Lesson Five
Students will analyze the nutritional needs of animals by creating a model of a balanced diet for a pig to explore the organization of their monogastric digestive system.
*This Google form allows students to complete the escape room clues. It only allows students to move on if they get the correct answer. Have students “screenshot” their final page to show you they have completed the quiz.
This resource is supported by the
