Lesson Plan Assignment

Email to Henrik by end of day...
Thursday, December 15, 2005
     

 

Topic and Title: What is the general topic you will teach with this lesson plan? Eg. 3rd Grade Life Science - Adaptation   Lesson #1 - Biomes (Different Environments)

Subtopic (California State Life Science Standard): quote the actual standards ( see course website at http://science.csumb.edu/~hkibak/305web/ ) from among those at the grade level you have been assigned.

Teacher Background: Provide the background a teacher would need to carry out your lesson plan. For example if you are teaching about plant life cycles, prepare a power point presentation describing plants, flowers, pollen, wind and animal pollination, seeds, seedlings, etc... it might be fun to include a slide on allergies and how weather stations keep track of pollen.

Teacher Preparation: What will you have to do before you can teach this activity? Eg. Buy crickets at the pet store, prepare handouts and photocopy them etc… All the time imagine that you are telling someone else how to teach these lessons. Are the instructions on the lesson plan you have been assigned good enough?  Improve them!

Thinking/Focus Questions: At the beginning of each day's activities teachers usually ask several focus questions to prepare kids for the upcoming activity. For example, if you are about to do an activity with seeds and saltwater (as I will in this class!) you might begin by asking the class:

Why don't I water our crops with ocean water? Aren't there plants in the sea? Why doesn't rainwater have salt in it? Why is the ocean water salty? Maybe lots of plants can grow in saltwater? "Well, we're gonna find out!"

These are discussion questions for the kids that you should have some idea about how to answer, but not to give the kids the answers. I would like you to prepare similar questions for each of your activities in addition to the ones that are given in the lesson plan... 

Procedures: This will be the bulk of your lesson plan. I would like you to select or prepare three activities that support the standard(s) you have chosen to teach. Begin with the activities listed in the lesson plan. For additional examples of activities please see the McGraw-Hill K-6 Science text for California, Project Learning Tree, Project Wild, or Project Wild Aquatic. For each activity, each day, provide a detailed list of exactly what you are going to do during that activity. If you are going to give the students a handout, I want to see the handout. If you are going to show a video, I want the title, date, and publisher of the video. Here is a quick example:

Day One

  • First I will discuss the focus questions with the children.
  • Next I will hand out sheets of paper and boxes of crayons to each child.
  • Then I will hand out a pictures of flowers to each child and have them copy it with crayons.
  • Underneath I will ask them to list parts that they notice on their flower. Let them use their own words for these parts such as (stringy thing, petal, dusty stuff etc.)
  • When they are finished I will ask them to count off by two's and have every second child bring their drawing to the front of the class. I will have them show to the rest of the class the parts of their flower.
  • Then I will ask the seated children to point out similarities and differences between the flowers.


Day Two

  • First today's focus questions, then...
  • I will hand out an illustration of a typical flower to each child with blank spots for labels.
  • At the front of the class I will have a huge version of the same illustration with blanks.
  • Together, I will label each of the parts of the flower with the real names of the parts and they will copy those names onto their sheets.
  • Then I will hand out crayons and allow the children to color their flowers.


Day Three

  • First today's focus questions, then...
  • Today I will bring in some basic flowers from a flower shop.
  • I will hand out sheets of paper and ask students to divide them into four sections labelled petals, sepals, stamens, and pistil.
  • I will give each student a flower and ask them to tear it apart, leaving a pile of each of the parts in the correct section.
  • Then I will ask them to tear open the ovary to find out what's inside.

 

Day Four

  • Bring in a dried sunflower head from last years garden.  Ask the children how many seeds there are?  How many seeds did it take to grow this flower?  How many flowers can I get from these seeds?
  • Have the children each pick three seeds out as they pass the dried flower around.
  • When they have their seeds take them outside to plant them in the garden or to the milk carton or 2 liter bottles you have ready for their planting.
  • The students will keep a record of what happens.

Day Five

  • Today, give the students a very clear drawing of a sunflower.  Using the lines and labels on the handout, and copying the words you have written on the board, see if the students can correctly label the parts of the flower.

The next day could be work with tomatoes, followed by taking apart soaked peanut seeds, followed by germinating sunflower seeds, followed by an activity on pollination, followed on a unit on bees and other pollinators and on and on... hopefully all carefully related to a standard.

Questions: Each of these activities should lead to more questions. In the case above, the questions might be why are some flowers different and why are they the same? Which should lead to pollination and how different plant flowers are pollinated in different ways (adaptation). I want you to prepare several questions that you think children might ask and write about how you might respond to those questions (note: this doesn't mean "answer" them).

Integration: This is where you think and write about how your activity relates to the standard you have chosen and how it will relate to the other science topics you will be teaching as well as the language arts and mathematics skills you will be teaching. In other words, where in this lesson do students do math and read or write?

Closure: Describe in detail how you will know that the students know what you want them to know. How do you assess for the standard and prepare students for the kind of questions they will have on the statewide test? Include a copy of an assessment instrument such as a fill-in-the-blank quiz or grading criteria for a project.