Mars Base One: Unit Lesson Plan

Grades: 3 and 4 GATE (works for grade 5)   Subjects: Science, Engineering, Math   Length: 5 missions of 45 to 60 minutes   Site page: fun-gate.com, Mars Base One

Universal Concept: Systems

Unit Overview

Teams act as Mission Control for six astronauts on Mars. They pack a rocket under a strict weight limit, then run a base through five missions: landing week, a dust season, a Mars winter, a solar storm, and the trip home. Oxygen, water, power, and food all depend on each other, so every choice has a cost somewhere else. The page never does the arithmetic for them. Teams add up their own cargo and answer a math question built from their own gauges every sol.

Essential Questions

• How do the parts of a system depend on each other?
• When you cannot bring everything, how do you decide what matters most?
• Why do engineers check their numbers, and each other?

Standards Alignment

Science and Engineering (Nevada Academic Content Standards for Science, based on NGSS)

• 3-5-ETS1-1 Define a simple design problem that includes criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.
• 3-5-ETS1-2 Generate and compare multiple solutions based on how well each meets the criteria and constraints.
• 3-5-ETS1-3 Plan and carry out fair tests to find failure points and improve a design.

Mathematics

• 3.OA.A.3 Use multiplication and division within 100 to solve word problems.
• 3.OA.D.8 Solve two-step word problems using the four operations.
• 3.NBT.A.2 Fluently add and subtract within 1000.
• 4.OA.A.3 Solve multi-step word problems, including problems where remainders must be interpreted.
• 4.NBT.B.4 Fluently add and subtract multi-digit whole numbers.

Social Studies and ELA

• SS.4.33 Examine jobs related to a career of interest.
• W.3.2 and W.4.2 Write informative or explanatory texts that convey ideas clearly (mission reports).
• SL.3.1 and SL.4.1 Engage in collaborative discussions.

Standard descriptions are shortened. Check the codes against your current district curriculum documents before submitting.

Learning Intentions

We are learning to:

• see how the parts of a system depend on each other.
• make choices inside a limit, and explain what we gave up.
• use math to plan ahead, and check our own work.

Success Criteria

I can:

• add up our cargo weight correctly and keep it under the limit.
• explain what happens to oxygen, water, and food when the power drops.
• answer the Mission Control question each sol and show my work on paper.
• choose the right crew member for a problem and say why that job fits.
• write a mission report that uses at least one number from our mission.
• (Stretch) plan two sols ahead instead of one.

Learning Objectives

By the end of the unit, students will:

1. Design a cargo list that meets a weight constraint, and revise it after a failed test.
2. Trace a cause and effect chain through at least two connected parts of the base system.
3. Solve one-step and two-step word problems with all four operations, using values they read from gauges.
4. Match six space careers to the kinds of problems each one solves.
5. Explain a trade-off in writing, with evidence from their own mission.

Key Vocabulary

system, constraint, trade-off, sol, solar panel, battery, recycle, radiation, solar flare, launch window, engineer, botanist, geologist

Materials and Resources

• One Chromebook per team of 2 or 3, open to Mars Base One on fun-gate.com
• Scratch paper and a pencil for every student (required, since the page does not add for them)
• Projector or TV for the two videos in the Movie Theater tab
• Mission Notebook for each team (a page with four headings: What we sent, Our math, What happened, What we would change)
• Chart paper for a class system map
• Headphones if teams will use the Listen button

Prior Knowledge and Warm-up (15 minutes)

Prior knowledge: Students can add and subtract within 1000 and know basic multiplication facts. Division with remainders is introduced by the game and may need a quick mini-lesson.

Warm-up, "The Backpack Problem": Tell students: "You are hiking for three days. Your backpack can hold 10 kilograms. Water weighs 1 kilogram a bottle and you need 2 bottles a day. Food weighs 1 kilogram a day. A tent weighs 3. A stove weighs 2. A camera weighs 1." Partners decide what to bring and add it up. Ask: What did you leave behind? What would happen without it? Then watch the trailer and the Mission Briefing.

Instructional Procedures

Mission 1: Landing Week (about 50 minutes)

1. Warm-up and videos (15 min). Run the Backpack Problem. Watch both videos. Read the learning intentions and success criteria together.
2. Team setup (3 min). Form teams of 2 or 3. Assign jobs that rotate each sol: Flight Director (clicks), Calculator (does the math on paper), and Checker (checks the math before anything is typed). Set the norm: "No number gets typed until two people agree."
3. Meet the crew and pack the rocket (12 min). Teams read the six job descriptions, then build a cargo list under 1,000 kilograms and add it up on paper. The page sends back a wrong total without the answer.
4. Fly seven sols (15 min). Each sol the team reads the event, chooses who to send, sets the power switches, and answers one math question. Circulate and ask: What does that machine need to run? What happens to oxygen if you switch it off? Show me where you worked that out.
5. Mission report (5 min). Teams read the "Looking ahead" forecast and write what they would change.
6. Clean up (5 min).

If a mission is scrubbed: this is the engineering design cycle working as intended. Nobody is hurt in the story. The team reads which gauge ran out, records it, and repacks. From Mission 2 on, each scrub also earns a slightly bigger supply drone, so no team gets stuck.

Missions 2 to 5

Each mission follows the same routine: review the Mission Log (5 min), short warm-up question (5 to 10 min), load the supply drone and add it up (10 min), fly seven sols (20 min), mission report (5 min), clean up (5 min). The base carries over, so earlier choices keep mattering.

Mission	New problem	Math focus	Science idea	Warm-up question
2. Dust Season	Two dust storms cut solar power. New gear: wind turbine, panel brush robot.	Adding several power sources. Two-step problems about how much battery a storm will use.	Solar panels need sunlight. Good designs have more than one way to make power.	What would you do at home if the power went out for two days?
3. The Long Night	Winter: weaker panels and heaters that drain the batteries every night. New gear: nuclear battery, insulation.	Multiplying by 7. Planning what must be left in the battery at sunset.	Seasons, insulation, and why batteries and pipes fail in the cold.	Why is it colder in winter? How do you keep heat from escaping?
4. Solar Storm	Solar flares, and a radio blackout where nobody checks the team's math for two sols. New gear: radiation shelter.	Mixed operations with no immediate feedback. Checking each other's work.	Radiation, shielding, and how flares disrupt radio.	How do you know an answer is right when there is no one to ask?
5. The Ride Home	Make 50 fuel before the launch window while keeping the crew alive. Then choose which samples to bring home under an 80 kilogram limit.	Division, counting up to a target, and finding the best combination under a limit.	Making fuel from local resources. Launch windows.	If you could bring only three things home from a trip, how would you choose?

Culminating Task

Students write advice for the next crew: "Three things every Mars mission must get right, and why." Each piece of advice must be backed by something that happened on their own base, with at least one number.

Assessment Methods

Formative: scratch paper and Mission Notebook entries; observation of the Checker role; the Mission Control math score shown at the end of each mission; exit ticket: "One thing on our base that depended on another thing."

Summative: the mission report or culminating task, scored with this rubric.

Criteria	4 Exceeds	3 Meets	2 Approaching	1 Beginning
Systems thinking	Traces a chain through three or more connected parts and predicts what would happen next.	Explains how a change in one part affected another part.	Names parts of the base without connecting them.	Describes events with no link between them.
Math accuracy	Work is shown, correct, and checked by a teammate. Plans more than one sol ahead.	Work is shown and mostly correct.	Answers are given with little or no work, or with frequent errors.	Guesses without working it out.
Trade-off reasoning	Names what was given up, why, and what evidence showed whether it was worth it.	Names what was chosen and what was given up.	Names a choice but not its cost.	Does not describe a choice.
Teamwork	Does the assigned job, checks others respectfully, and helps the team agree.	Does the assigned job and listens to teammates.	Takes part, but types or clicks before the team agrees.	Does not take part, or takes over.

Differentiation Strategies

Support:

• Every game screen has a Listen button.
• Give a cargo recording sheet with a row for each item: how many, kilograms each, total for that row.
• Allow a multiplication chart, or skip-counting on a number line.
• Pre-teach "full sols" as "how many whole groups," with counters.
• Sentence frames: "We sent ___ instead of ___ because ___." "When ___ dropped, ___ also dropped because ___."

Extend (depth and complexity):

• Patterns and trends: graph one gauge across all five missions and explain every rise and fall.
• Rules: write the three rules of your base as "if, then" statements.
• Unanswered questions: could a base survive with no tanks at all? With no machines? Test it and report.
• Big idea: draw the base as a system map with arrows, then name another system that works the same way.
• Challenge run: finish all five missions without a single scrub, or bring home the highest possible science score.
• Careers: pick one crew job, research the real version, and write what that person does on a normal sol.

Discussion Questions

• What did you leave off the rocket, and did you miss it?
• What happened to everything else when the power dropped?
• Which crew member did you send most often? Why does a mission need six different jobs?
• During the radio blackout, how did your team make sure your numbers were right?
• Where else have you seen a system where one part failing causes other parts to fail?

Closure

Return to the success criteria and have students rate each one with a thumb. Then each team finishes this sentence in the Mission Notebook: "On our base, ___ depended on ___, and we found that out when ___." End with clean up.