Creating a Gas, Cloze Procedure

1. Creating a Gas, Cloze Procedure Barbara Konowicz Funds for this project were provided by a grant from the federal Improving Teacher Quality State Grants (Title II, Part A) Professional Development Program administered by the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.

2. Teacher Information • Churchland Academy Elementary School • 5th Grade • All subjects

3. SCHEV Project Participation • NASA workshop, NASA Langley • Reading Strategies Workshop, Dr. Ray Morgan, ODU • NASA Follow-Up Workshop, Rudo Kashiri, Norcom High School • BER-Reading in Content Area Donna Gordon, Richmond Conference Center

4. Specific Strategies and Class Needs • My class struggled with new vocabulary • My class liked to see a demonstration or participate in a hands on activity • My class had difficulty summarizing

5. Creating A GasCloze Procedure

6. Creating a Gas • SOL 5.4 – Matter • Gas, like all states of matter, has mass and takes up space • The gas was created through a chemical change • The gas, carbon dioxide, CO2, is a compound, made of 2 different elements

7. Cloze Procedure • Summary of major ideas from experiment • Review of vocabulary and concepts

8. General Overview of Lesson • Creating a Gas • Materials: • Clean transparent bottle • Balloon • Vinegar • Baking soda • Funnel • Fill bottle 1/3 with vinegar • Use funnel, fill balloon with baking soda • Place balloon over opening of bottle • Lift balloon so baking soda falls into vinegar • Watch as balloon inflates

9. General Overview of Lesson • Cloze Procedure Contains sentences with some of the important vocabulary words of the lesson omitted. This will provide more focus to the activity and emphasize the main ideas. Also, drawing a picture of the experiment should help the students to reflect on the activity.

10. Lesson / Strategy Adaptations My class enjoyed the activities, but often lost focus of the concepts. With the addition of the cloze procedure, this will help keep the class focused on the concepts, reinforce the vocabulary and provide them with a study guide.

11. Student Response / Learning Outcomes Since most gases are not easily seen or felt, it is difficult for students to understand that this state of matter also has mass and takes of up space. This demonstration helped the students to understand this concept and also developed the understanding of chemical/physical change.

12. Reflections • We covered many different techniques to aid student learning. Some of the strategies were: • PAR • Preparation- determine and build background, gather ideas and associations • Assistance-reading with a purpose and develop comprehension, guided reading • Reflection-comprehension, in their own words or drawings

13. Reflections • Guided Reading – technique to maintain focus As the student reads, markings are made along the side of paper *= I agree, x = I disagree, += That’s new, !=Wow, ?=Don’t understand • Gist Procedure – Summarizing A short reading passage of 4 or 5 paragraphs is summarized one paragraph at a time by filling in 20 blanks with words • Semantic Feature Analysis A category is selected and words or concepts are listed in the left column Features of the category are listed along the top row Students fill in the matrix, assessing whether the feature exits for each item

14. Overall Experience The SCHEV Professional Development program exposed me to alternative lesson plans that I have found very useful. These plans emphasized a more interactive approach to lessons, which actively engaged the students in the learning process. Many of the activities made students make connections between past learning and new information through personal associations.