Strathcona’s mission to Mars

Strathcona School students have successfully colonized the Red Planet. 

Strathcona teacher Peter Grozdanovic and his Grade 4/5 classroom established a hypothetical human settlement on Mars as part of a unit on habitats and communities. 

An example of project-based learning, students spent an extended amount of time exploring the concept of Mars colonization. 

“Project-based learning is similar to inquiry-based learning, where it emphasizes the student’s role in their own personal learning,” Grozdanovic said.

“In this particular unit we were interested in what the students were interested in. I have a list here of all the student’s questions, everything from ‘Why is Mars bumpy?’ to ‘Are aliens real?’ to ‘What are those red things on Mars?’ to ‘How do you shower if you go to Mars?’

“Ultimately though, we looked at the question, ‘Would you live on Mars?’”

To explore that question, Grozdanovic and his students created a detailed diorama that represents the requirements for successful colonization of the fourth rock from the Sun. 

The class also created a Cosmos-style comprehensive video for the project, with the student astronauts explaining their roles on the Red Planet.  

“I’m an engineer for the Mars Boring Company,” said one student in the video. “We will construct underground tunnels to transport astronauts from the spaceship to where they’re going to live. We’ll also be building a hyperloop, a super-fast train that travels over 1,000 kilometres per hour. In the future, this hyperloop will be used to connect new bases that will be spread all throughout Mars.”

“I’m the meteorologist here on Mars Base One,” said another student in the video. “The weather conditions I’ll be measuring on Mars are wind, humidity, visibility, sunrise, wind gusts, temperature, pressure and sunset.”

The students also wanted to figure out if they could grow food on Mars as easily as Matt Damon in The Martian. 

“We talked about potentially using hydroponics, but then we searched the internet and found a company in the U.S. that provides soil that is close in chemical composition to Mars soil,” Grozdanovic said.  

“We were able to get a small amount of that soil and we were able to get some growth to take place in it. It was super fascinating for the students to see.”

Grozdanovic said the exploration of the dusty and desolate Red Planet also inspired his students to take better care of our Blue Planet. 

“Their thought was ‘What are we going to do to keep Earth safe?’” Grozdanovic said. “So, we made up these bags, each containing a cup, some soil, some seed and a document explaining how to grow plants at home. We did 30 of them and we’re doing 30 more. Our goal to make this available to every student from Grades 4 to 6 so they could understand that they can grow their own food and how to do that.”

Grozdanovic said he plans to continue with similar project-based learning endeavours in the future. 

“As tough a year as this has been, I had such an amazing year with my students,” Grozdanovic said. “It was such an exciting and fun year amidst a challenging time.”