Getting Kids Excited About Science

Desert Ridge Middle School students learn about Earth's atmosphere by tracking toy boats in the Arctic.

How do you get middle schoolers in the desert Southwest to care about weather patterns and currents in the Arctic Ocean, more than 2,800 miles away?

Desert Ridge Middle School science teacher Turtle Haste knows you get them to care by giving them skin in the game, so to speak. That’s where the Float Your Boat project comes in. It’s a global project that gives students and the public an opportunity to learn about the Arctic Ocean by taking something they create, placing it in the Arctic, and allowing them to track its movements in real time.

The project ties in perfectly with Haste’s lessons on the Earth’s atmosphere. She’s been teaching  her sixth-graders about the Arctic Ocean system, circulation sea-ice cover and how the Arctic Ocean is changing.

As part of the lesson, Haste’s students have been decorating toy wooden boats that are set to be deployed during an Arctic Ocean expedition early next year. They will be left on the sea ice next to an Arctic weather buoy that is actively transmitting data to the International Arctic Buoy Programme.

“Since the wooden boat is assumed to be in the same position as the buoy as long as the buoy batteries last and the sea ice lasts, students can then follow the buoy data as a method to follow their wooden boat in the arctic Ocean currents and gather Arctic atmospheric data,” Haste said. Students will be able to track their boat’s movements using the map on a website.

She told KRQE she hopes the project will get students excited about science and help them understand how weather works.

“It gives a chance to focus on the Arctic because we’re in the desert…,” Haste told the news station. “They don’t realize that a lot of our weather is driven by what comes off the Pacific Ocean and some of the Pacific stuff is driven by the Arctic and the big polar pressure shifts that come through that.”