I was asked by a local school teacher to design a hands-on critical thinking activity to be used in their 7th grade classrooms. This was a Problem-Based Learning Unit, which integrates curriculum areas, such as language, math, and science into one interactive activity. It's designed to build student's critical thinking skills, so they can make inferences from data towards problem resolution.

 

I decided to incorporate my love of astronomy, mythology, and science by creating a mysterious object with strange markings that required the help of students to decipher in order to discover its origin. Writing a news article, designing a physical object, and creating an alphabet with corresponding key code were all part of this project to keep the students engaged.

 

See if you can decipher the origins of the alien artifact (without using the teacher's key code)!