The Corn Conundrum MEA provides students with an agricultural problem in which they must work as a team to develop a procedure to select the best variety of corn to grow under drier conditions predicted by models of global climate change. Students must determine the most important factors that make planting crops sustainable in restricted climate conditions for the client. The main focus of this MEA is manipulating factors relating to plant biology, including transpiration and photosynthesis.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought processes. MEAs follow a problem-based, student-centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEAs visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx