In January 2023 we started an Invention unit, inspired in part by the many inventions we learned about during our study of the Industrial Revolution. We started this unit by watching a few videos. Bill Nye always offers interesting and humorous videos on science topics. Then we watched videos that documented two recent real world inventions. One was about how an Australian inventor, who helped Botswana farmers stave off lion attacks by painting eyes on the romps of their cattle. The other one was a TED talk featuring a child, Richard Turere, living in the Masai community who watched his family’s all-important cattle being attacked by lions. The young child invented a solar-powered solution to safely scare the lions away.

Our students then had to read four articles from A Foss kit titled “Ideas and Inventions” about other inventions. They had to identify what the problem these inventions solved, and how they were similar or different. Then it was time to come up with their own. But first they had to identify three problems they experience in their day to day lives and then consider what their solutions might be. These were shared in class where they received valuable feedback. After each student chose their favorite invention idea, they had to diagram and describe it. Then it came time to create a prototype of the invention and to write a TV commercial to sell their invention.