Sanford Underground Research Facility:
Education and Outreach (K-12 Education
Resources; Curriculum Modules; https://www.
sanfordlab.org/feature/k-12-stem-education)
Reaching 4850 feet underground, the Sanford Underground Research Facility (Sanford
Lab) supports cutting-edge research in particle
and nuclear physics, as well as other disciplines, including the life sciences. As part of
Sanford Lab’s education and outreach effort,
they make available a variety of offerings for
K-12 teachers, including fieldtrips to Sanford
Lab, classroom presentations, and teacher professional development. These typically serve
the needs of teachers in South Dakota, but
the K-12 education team also make available
inquiry-based curriculum modules that can
be used in middle school and high school science classrooms everywhere. Although this
review focuses on their life science modules,
modules that address chemistry, geology,
and physics concepts also exist.
Biology researchers have found that an
advantage of having access to a laboratory
built nearly a mile below the Earth’s surface
is the ability to study extremophiles in their
natural habitats. Sanford Lab’s K-12 educa-
tion team has taken advantage of this aspect
and developed modules containing a series
of lessons around the science of life and the
characteristics of these organisms. The mod-
ules come in the form of a kit that teachers
receive. Each kit includes materials for
hands-on labs, teacher guides, student docu-
ments, and other resources to support teach-
ers as they implement the lessons. The
lessons are designed to address the needs of
life science teachers and are aligned with the
Next Generation Science Standards.
The module entitled “Perplexing Puddles,” for example, solicits students to theorize about the ability of life to exist deep
underground. This six-lesson module draws
students in with little burden on their pre-existing knowledge. They begin with a discussion about the properties of life, and
then jump right into an exploration of these
characteristics. This first lesson, “Can Life
Exist Nearly a Mile Underground?,” asks
students to observe what happens when
they pour sugar into three jars of warm
water—one jar contains nothing other than
the water, another contains pulverized antacid, and the third contains yeast. Without
knowing what each jar contains, students
must hypothesize which jar might host life,
building arguments using evidence. The lessons move on through explorations of the
conditions required for life, the ability of
extremophiles to survive in harsh conditions, and culminates in an activity in which
students use agar plates to grow biofilms
similar to those that grow in Sanford Lab.
I found Sanford Lab’s lessons cleverly
developed to foster critical thinking. Not
every lesson includes a lab activity, but they
all focus on developing students’ inquiry
skills. Students are encouraged to keep sci-
ence notebooks that will help them track their
thought process and knowledge development
through each lesson. Since the lessons build
off one another, it is expected that students’
knowledge will also grow. The lessons are
designed to solicit peer-to-peer learning
through both discourse and collaborative
activities. The materials are written clearly
and will support teachers regardless of their
experience with these activities. The “Perplex-
ing Puddles” module, in particular, could be
implemented at the very beginning of the
school year in a high school Biology course,
since teachers can use many of the concepts
covered by the module to ground topics that
are typically sequenced later in the year,
including the study of prokaryotes, adapta-
tion, the cell membrane, and cellular commu-
nication. Teachers can visit the website to
explore some of the other modules offered
by the Sanford Lab K-12 STEM education
team. They have developed modules for ele-
mentary, middle, and high school students.
The module kits can be “checked out” by
teachers outside of South Dakota who are
only required to pay for shipping each way.
Remy Dou, Ph.D.
Visiting Clinical Assistant Professor
Florida International University
redou@fiu.edu
The American Biology Teacher, Vol. 80, No. 9, p. 696, ISSN 0002-7685, electronic ISSN 1938-4211. © 2018 National Association of Biology Teachers. All rights
reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page,
www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/abt.2018.80.9.696.
CLASSROOM
MATERIALS
& MEDIA
REVIEWS
REMY DOU, DEPARTMENT EDITOR
