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Unit Structure & Flexibility 

​The overall structure of the 7-week unit includes:
  • Garden Lessons (1-5 lessons, 1 day-1 week)
  • Core lessons (21 lessons, ~4 weeks)
  • Final project lessons (~10 lessons, 2 weeks)
The garden and final project lessons are a set of general recommendations for daily activities with flexible timing, while the core lessons provide a daily plan, activity details, timing, and resources. In the core lessons students develop a classroom installation interwoven with a classroom experiment of the garden, while simultaneously planning for their own final projects. In the final project, students design both a garden investigation and lantern artifact that work together to tell a story of their learning about the garden.
Each core lesson has a main disciplinary focus, but nearly all also have at least one integrated practice or idea from another discipline. Each core lesson's main focus falls into one of the three disciplinary categories: science (S1-S6), art (A1-A6), and computing (C1-C5a). The number system gives an indication of the order for each set of lessons (e.g. A1 must be taught before A2)
However, we do not recommend following the lessons straight from science to art to computing. Instead, the lessons are mixed with one another to facilitate a stronger transdisciplinary character to the unit. The core lessons are split into two basic sections. Each teacher begins with the same set of lessons in the same order (Part 1). In Part 2, teachers choose the order of the remaining lessons, given the constraints of prior knowledge for each lesson.

Possible Unit Plans

The full 7-week Luminous Science curricular unit starts the same for all classrooms. Part 1 of the core lessons comes after the garden lessons. Part 1 has a specific organization in order to best support integration of the disciplines through a cohesive unit and to support students learning.
Part 2 of the core lessons follows Part 1. The flexibility of Part 2 of the core lessons allows for a wide range of possible unit plan organizations. Given the constraints of lessons that need to be taught before others, we provide three complete example unit plans, each of which end with the final project. However, we strongly suggest teachers develop their own unit plan organization to create a structure perfect for their classroom context.
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Partially Mixed Lesson Flow [View Unit]
Benefits: Disciplines feel mixed, some materials can be used from day-to-day, 
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Fully Mixed Lesson Flow [View Unit]
Benefits: Disciplines feel mixed, rarely are two days in a row the same disciplinary focus
Challenges: Can feel hectic and materials are often not the same from day-to-day
Fully Grouped Lesson Flow [View Unit]
Benefits: Materials can be used day-to-day
Challenges: Can feel stuck in one discipline for a whole week
Short Units:
While we do not recommend skipping any of the lessons, we recognize that a short version of the project might be useful for some situations. We note that while we provide short versions of the unit plan, teachers will have to make modifications in some lessons to attend to lessons that have been skipped. We also note that in both of the short versions the students will not engage with the content or practices to the same level of depth as the full unit plans.
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Short Version with Final Project [View Unit]
​~4.5 weeks
Does not include all of the class project.
Short Version Without Final Project [View Unit]
~3 weeks
Focuses on the class project only.

Luminous Science Lessons

Each lesson plan includes the following:
  • Instructional objectives
  • List of prior lessons to complete
  • List of lessons that can be combined for block schedules 
  • Teacher prep
  • Student prep (content they should have covered)
  • Materials list
  • Standards
  • Activity instructions with recommended timing for activities
  • Worksheets or other resources such as slides or videos
Recommended: Prior to beginning the project with students, teachers should make a few decisions. These include 1) choosing the type of lights, 2) how to connect the lights to the micro:bit, and 3) how to store micro:bit programs.
Note: The provided standards lists provided for each lesson often cover all possible connected standards, which is more than is possible to cover within a lesson. Therefore, teachers should tailor each lesson to focus on a desired sub-set of the possible standards provided. Standards listed come from the Next Generation Science Standards, K-12 Computer Science Framework, and the Studio Habits of Mind. 

Luminous Science Materials

A comprehensive list of required and recommended materials can be found here.