Oil, Oil Everywhere

Resource: Oil, Oil Everywhere

Overview

Brief Description of the Resource: The concepts of surface area and estimation are applied to science as students investigate the 2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill. Students learn how oil interacts with water when they try their hands at creating their own "spills." The lesson provides resources to help students move beyond the topics of surface area and estimation and into the realm of science with regard to studying the impacts of human activity and oil spills.

Technical and Cost Considerations: This lesson is freely available from NCTM's Illuminations. Well-crafted and clearly laid out, this lesson also includes free activity sheet PDFs available for easy downloading. Teachers should be aware that there may be some cost incurred gathering the needed materials for the activities. These materials include corn oil, cake pans and measuring spoons.

Evaluation

Description of the Learning Activity

This lesson plan includes one math lesson on surface area and estimation as well as possible assessments and extensions which could help teachers connect this activity to science.

1. Learning Activity Types

• LA-Apply: Through the lesson and their experiments, students are applying mathematics to problems and situations. They are connecting mathematics to the real world.

2. What Mathematics Is Being Learned?

Teacher Lisa Cartwright clearly outlined the various objectives and standards being addressed in this lesson on the page itself. I have copied and pasted a selection of them here:

Learning Objectives

Students will:

• Predict, estimate, and record the area of a surface covered by oil.
• Predict, estimate, and record how area changes when oil spills are split, moved, and/or recombined.
• Use whole and fractional amounts to estimate.

NCTM Standards and Expectations

• Develop and use strategies to estimate the results of whole-number computations and to judge the reasonableness of such results.
• Develop strategies for estimating the perimeters, areas, and volumes of irregular shapes.

Common Core State Standards – Mathematics

Grade 3, Measurement & Data

• CCSS.Math.Content.3.MD.A.2: Measure and estimate liquid volumes and masses of objects using standard units of grams (g), kilograms (kg), and liters (l). Add, subtract, multiply, or divide to solve one-step word problems involving masses or volumes that are given in the same units, e.g., by using drawings (such as a beaker with a measurement scale) to represent the problem.

Grade 3, Geometry

• CCSS.Math.Content.3.G.A.2: Partition shapes into parts with equal areas. Express the area of each part as a unit fraction of the whole. For example, partition a shape into 4 parts with equal area, and describe the area of each part as 1/4 of the area of the shape.

Grade 4, Measurement & Data

• CCSS.Math.Content.4.MD.A.2: Use the four operations to solve word problems involving distances, intervals of time, liquid volumes, masses of objects, and money, including problems involving simple fractions or decimals, and problems that require expressing measurements given in a larger unit in terms of a smaller unit. Represent measurement quantities using diagrams such as number line diagrams that feature a measurement scale.

Grade 5, Num & Ops Fractions

• CCSS.Math.Content.5.NF.B.3: Interpret a fraction as division of the numerator by the denominator (a/b = a ÷ b). Solve word problems involving division of whole numbers leading to answers in the form of fractions or mixed numbers, e.g., by using visual fraction models or equations to represent the problem. For example, interpret 3/4 as the result of dividing 3 by 4, noting that 3/4 multiplied by 4 equals 3, and that when 3 wholes are shared equally among 4 people each person has a share of size 3/4. If 9 people want to share a 50-pound sack of rice equally by weight, how many pounds of rice should each person get? Between what two whole numbers does your answer lie?

Common Core State Standards – Practice

• CCSS.Math.Practice.MP1: Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
• CCSS.Math.Practice.MP4: Model with mathematics.

---- End copying and pasting ----

In terms of Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), this activity meets:

• 5-ESS3 Earth and Human Activity
• 5-ESS3: Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth’s resources and environment.
• 5-ESS3.C: Human activities in agriculture, industry, and everyday life have had major effects on the land, vegetation, streams, ocean, air, and even outer space. But individuals and communities are doing things to help protect Earth's resources and environments.

Proficiency Strands

• Conceptual Understanding: Students will need to apply what they've learned about surface area and estimation to this new situation where they are engaged in a demonstration/experiment. A strong understanding of what surface area is will be needed or be developed in this lesson.
• Adaptive Reasoning: Since students are estimating the surface area of a moving oil spill, they will need to adapt their reasoning as the spill changes. They will also need to adapt their (hopefully!) existing procedural fluency with calculating area and apply it to a real situation.

Additional comments on what is being learned

Some might argue that this is more a measurement and data tech activity than geometry one. However, because of the connections between perimeter, area and volume and geometry, I would assert that this is very much falls in the realm of geometry. One of the extensions even links this to volume, "As volume is taught, ask students if they can create a spill where volume is more easily observed. Challenge them to increase the thickness of the oil layer. (Hint: Use ice water)."

To make the connections between math and science clear, teachers may want to supplement with some of the offered extensions. It will be important to show how the math concepts and the science concepts are linked. Students could be asked questions such as: Does the surface area of a spill make a difference in the clean process? Why do we estimate the size of an oil spill?

Additionally, Cartwright offers a great science extension to link this activity to a discussion about variables: "What will happen if a student doubles the amount of oil in their spill? Will the area of the spill also double? If you use the same amount of corn oil, will the areas differ in size? Turn the lesson into a science investigation by testing variables such as type of oil, amount of oil, temperature of water, etc."

3. How Is the Mathematics Represented?

In terms of how the mathematics is represented digitally, Cartwright uses words, lists and subpages to get her ideas across. However, for students, the mathematics is represented through manipulatives. Students create "oil spills" in the classroom and use tools to help them estimate the surface area of the spills. By completing these activities, students are able to better grasp what surface area is. The scale of oil spills may be slightly obscured with this representation, but images from the Internet of the real 2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill could help clarify this for students.

4. What Role Does Technology Play?

One of the greatest advantages of the technology referenced here is that through collaborative sites like Illuminations, it is possible for teachers from around the world to share ideas which is pretty unique. For student learning, this means better and more well-thought-out lessons. Students with this particular lesson will also benefit from their ability to use technology to deepen their understanding of this concept. The only disadvantage of technology in this tool that I see is that Cartwright uploaded her resources in PDF format rather than something editable, like Docs.
Affordances of Technology for Supporting Learning

• Representing Ideas & Thinking: This activity allows students to represent their ideas and thinking about what surface area is. It also helps them conceptualize what an oil spill is and what it looks like.
• Accessing Information: The lesson also allows students to access information about various oil spills from a mathematical and a science perspective.
• Communicating & Collaborating: Depending on how the lesson is presented, students will likely be collaborating as they work through the challenges posed in this lesson.

5. How Does the Technology Fit or Interact with the Social Context of Learning?

As the lesson is set up, students will be working in small groups to simulate oil spills and estimate surface area. Any use of technology by students in this lesson is likely to be more individual and related to the extensions (e.g. investigating more about oil spills online). Researching tends to be a more individual activity as peers read at different rates. However, collaboration is still possible as students compare their sources and information they've gathered.

6. Additional Comments

A discussion of the terms surface area versus area may be appropriate in this case. At this grade level, teachers may use these terms interchangeably, but this may be an appropriate time to bring up the more nuanced meaning of surface area as opposed to area. Sites like this one might be used to provide background on these terms.
This evaluation was developed in my work for the MSU Course, CEP 805: Spring 2017, and is also accessible on the private course wiki.