Jennifer L. Gilmour

Jennifer L. Gilmour Final Project CTSE-130 December 12, 2002

Lesson Plan #1: 3rd Grade Science • Standard 1.b.- Students understand that energy and matter have multiple forms and can be changed from one form to another. Students know that sources of stored energy take many forms, such as food, fuel, and batteries.

Objective: • Display how different things require different forms of energy to function, by showing how people, cars, and toys all operate using different sources of energy.

Motivation: • Teacher: “Let’s take a survey by a raise of hands. How many of my students walked to school today… and how many were driven?” • Students respond by raising their hands at the appropriate time and look around the room at the responses of their peers. • Teacher: “Each mode of transportation requires a different form of energy.”

Input of Information: • Teacher: “Do people drink gas or cars eat breakfast?... No. Each thing requires a different form of energy to function. People get energy from food, and where do cars get their fuel from?” • Students: “Gas.”

Checking Comprehension: • Teacher: “Likewise, this talking bear and this toy car (hold up objects) need another different form of energy to function.” • Teacher: “Both the talking bear and the toy car require batteries to speak and drive fast.”

Practice: • Teacher: “Recess is coming up. Does anybody want some gasoline to drink so they can run faster on the playground?” • Students: Negative responses reflecting how silly the idea of drinking gasoline is. • Teacher: “I think you’d rather have some juice. Energy from food is what people need to function.”

Practice: • Teacher: Hand out different battery-operated toys, some with batteries and some without, allowing the students to play around for a few minutes. • Students whose toys don’t work will probably become frustrated and confused, possibly comparing their toys to those around them that do work.

Closure: • Teacher: Write down the students’ names whose toys are not working. Help all of the students find the battery pack and have them look inside to discover whether or not they have batteries. Compare the names of those without batteries to those whose toys aren’t working. Ask the students why some of the toys didn’t work. • Students: Hopefully they can explain that the toys need batteries to function. • Teacher: “That’s right. None of your toys are broken, they just need energy (or batteries) to work, just like you and me need food, and cars need fuel.”

Formal/Informal Assessment: • Allow students to experiment with the toys for the remainder of the time allotted for the lesson and observe their actions to see if they still seem confused about the ability or inability of their toys to function. Are some students still trying to force their toys to work without batteries? Are other students using their neighbors’ toys that work instead of their own? Are still others removing batteries from one toy and trying them out on their own?

Lesson Plan #2: 3rd Grade Science • Standard 1.f.- Students understand that energy and matter have multiple forms and can be changed from one form to another. They come to know that melting is a change that occurs when objects are heated.

Objective: • Show how objects melt by using an ice cube and hands on experience with different temperature environments. Explain how maintaining the composition of objects (particularly food) relate to our everyday lives.

Motivation: • Teacher: Assign students in the class to three different teams and explain that each team will be competing to keep their ice cube (show them the ice) from melting. • Students arrange their desks by group so they can see the front of the class where the experimentations will take place. • Teacher: Explain and operate set-up. Team A’s ice cube will be placed inside of a test tube with a Bunsen burner. Team B’s ice cube will sit in a dish at room temperature. Team C’s ice cube will be placed inside of an ice box.

Input of Information: • Teacher: Have students watch what happens as one ice cube is heated, the other left alone at room temperature, and the third one placed within an ice box. • Students: Comment about who’s winning the contest (which team’s ice cube has melted the least).

Checking Comprehension: • Teacher: “Each ice cube is being changed by the surrounding temperature.” • Teacher: “Heat causes an ice cube to change from solid to liquid form (from frozen to melted).”

Practice: • Teacher: “Now let’s try this again. Who wants to be on Team A (wait for response), Team B (pause again), and Team C?” • Students: Hopefully most students will insist on belonging to Team C (the group with the ice box). • Teacher: “Okay. We’ll try this one more time, just to be sure the results weren’t a mistake.”

Practice: • Teacher: Make the results clear once again. Then ask the students if they would rather put their ice cube in the ice box (refrigerator) or the freezer. Remind students that the freezer is colder than the refrigerator and ice melts when it is warmer. • Students: Decide if the ice box or freezer would be better and then test it out.

Closure: • Teacher: “Why did the ice in the freezer stay frozen?” • Student: “Because heat makes ice cubes melt.” • Teacher: “That’s right. Heat is what makes ice melt. So if we want something to stay frozen, we must keep it cold. This is why we keep ice cream in the freezer and why it melts if we don’t eat it fast enough.”

Formal/Informal Assessment • Make a list of foods that should be stored at varying temperatures in order to maintain their designated composition. Have students write down whether they would freeze, refrigerate, leave at room temperature, or heat the designated foods. This exercise would lead into more lessons on the various states of matter and perhaps evaporation.

Lesson Plan #3: 5th Grade History • Standard 5.4 (7)- Explain the early democratic ideas and practices that emerged during the colonial period including the significance of representative assemblies and town meetings.

Objective: • Students discuss what self-government means and reflect on the right to vote.

Motivation: • Teacher: “If everyone does their homework for the week, we can either have a pizza party or watch a movie. Let’s put it to a vote.” • Students: Lots of shouting and sharing of opinions. • Teacher: “We need to organize a form of representation.”

Input of Information: • Teacher: “We are now going to break up into groups like the colonies and develop our own set of laws.” • Students debate over what “laws” (or classroom decisions) to make.

Checking Comprehension: • Teacher: “Have any of my students come to an agreement? If so, how have you reached this decision?” • Teacher: “The colonists needed to find a fair way to decide on laws. They chose leaders to represent what they wanted. These people were called representatives.”

Practice: • Teacher: Have the separate groups vote on whether they want to have a pizza party or watch a movie. Then have them elect a group representative to express their opinion. • Students present arguments for their choice and come to an agreement or compromise. • Teacher: Have the group representatives announce their vote.

Practice: • Teacher: “Now we will tally up the votes from every group.” • Students: Either cheers or cries of disappointment depending on whether or not they got what they wanted.

Closure: • Teacher: Express the importance of having a representative government. • Students: Complaints based on not getting what they wanted. • Teacher: “Unfortunately, although we need representatives to make organized decisions, not everyone gets what they want.”

Formal/Informal Assessment: • Determine how the representatives felt about the decision versus the townspeople. Did the students respond appropriately? Ask the students if they would rather vote independently with equal say on laws, or allow their representatives to vote for them. Or would they rather not make any decisions at all and have no say in the government?

Justification of Lesson Plans • Lesson Plan #1: 3rd Grade Physical Science Framework- Standard 1.b. • Lesson Plan #2: 3rd Grade Physical Science Framework- Standard 1.f. • Lesson Plan #3: 5th Grade History/Social Science Framework- Standard 7

Technological Support • History Lesson Plan #3 could be supported by many online history sites with examples of various representative governments of the past. Current events would also serve as useful resources for this lesson. • In the Physical Sciences Lesson Plan #2, heat lamps or other safer and more efficient means of heating or cooling devices could be used so students could have more of a hands on lesson without safety concerns. • For Lesson Plan #1, remote control cars could be used to add another confusing factor into discovering if the batteries (or lack there of) are the true cause of malfunction.

Technology Available for Student Assessment • Microsoft Excel (spreadsheet program) • Online Sites With Interactive Teacher Discussion Boards

Educational Research References • http://www.mcrel.org/standards-benchmarks/index.asp • http://www.socialstudies.org • http://www.cde.ca.gov/board http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/online/citex.html http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/ Electronic Toolkit C.D. “Teaching and Learning with Microsoft” http://www.ctc.ca.gov http://books.nap.edu/html/nses/index.html

Threaded Discussions • Jenny: Does anybody have any suggestions as to how to organize the final project/power point presentation. Did you record one lesson plan at a time and then apply all of the following evaluations and elements, or did you write all of the lesson plans and then follow the outline step by step according to that order of part A, B, C, etc. reflecting back on the three lesson plans? Please write back A.S.A.P.! Thanks! • Jenna: I did each lesson separately, dealing with each standard at a different time. I too, however, would like to know how other people are doing it. • Jenny: As of now, I'm planning on separating each lesson plan and then fulfilling the requirements for parts B. through E. after each one. Thanks for responding! Hope this helps!

Jennifer L. Gilmour