CI402

CI 402 / CI 413 INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES IN MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE
FALL 2002

Which Beads Will Fit?

Name: Laura Voegeli

Date of Lesson: October 10, 2002

Subject Area/Topic: Science/Solids

Grade Level: First Grade

Standards:

Science as Inquiry/Program Standard I: All students will experience science as full inquiry. In the elementary grades, students begin to develop the physical and intellectual abilities of scientific inquiry.

Physical Science/Program Standard II: All students will explore the world by observing and manipulating common objects and materials in their environment.

National Standard/Physical Science: Properties of objects and materials. National Standard/Physical Science: Position and motion of objects.

Outcomes/Objectives: The learner will be able to sort beads according to the screen they will fit through. The learner will be able to combine and separate solid materials of different particle sizes. The learner will be able to work cooperatively in a group.

Vocabulary: screen, sort, separate, set, large, medium, small

Materials:

One for each group of four students:

Set of 40 beads of four different sizes

Four screens of varying sizes

One for each student:

Student sheet no.24 called Bead Mix A or student sheet no. 25 called Bead

Mix B

Transparency called Screens

For the class:

3 Zip bags, 1-liter (optional)

1 Student sheet no. 26 called Screens (optional)

FOSS Science Stories

For assessment:

Assessment Checklist

Procedures:

Engage: Ask the students if they have ever needed to sort anything by size or if they can think of anything that one might separate by size. What did they sort? Why did they need the sizes separated? Would there have been another way to sort out their items by size other than just by hand?

Explore: Have a getter from each table collect a set of the beads and a set of the screens for their table. Tell the students that they need to work together to separate the beads by their size into four different containers. Let students work on this activity for about ten minutes. Students should be using the screens to separate the beads. If the students are picking apart the beads with their hands, guide them with some questions to get them to use the screens. For example, you could ask them, “That’s one idea, but is there another way?” Or, “What if there were too many beads to separate them by hand? What could you do then?” These questions should get students thinking of using the screen. After the ten minutes has passed, ask students to return all their beads to the original container and ask the getter to return them to the front of the classroom. (Concrete)

Formative assessment: Walk around to observe how students are working with the beads and screens.

Explain: As the getter is returning the items, have them pick up the two worksheets for their table, Bead Mix A and Bead Mix B. They will need to take one for each person at their table. When every student has a paper, ask students if they notice anything different about the beads pictured on the handouts. What is different between the beads inside the containers on Bead Mix A and those inside the containers on Bead Mix B? The students should notice that the beads on Bead Mix A are all one size in each container, while the beads on Bead Mix B are mixed together. What rule did you use to decide which screen to use to separate the soup mix during the activity yesterday? They should say they started with the smallest screen to get the smallest objects out of the mixture first. Do you think we can use that same rule with the beads? The students should agree to this possibility. Hand out a copy of the Screens transparency to every student. Ask students which screen is large, which is medium, and which is small. Why do we need these to be different sizes? The students should answer that they need to be different sizes because the beads are different sizes and not all of them will fit through the same sized screen. (Pictorial and Abstract)

Expand: Tell students to begin working on Bead Mix A. Tell students on this worksheet, they will be looking at the beads in each container and figuring out which screens the beads will pass through. Students should then be instructed to write the numbers of screens on the line by the corresponding container. Make sure students are aware that some beads may pass through more than one screen. Allow 10-15 minutes for this worksheet. It is now time for the students to begin working on Bead Mix B. Tell students that they should look at the bead mixture in each cup and figure out which screens could be used to separate the beads from one another. The students should write down the numbers of screens on the line next to the corresponding container. Again, inform the students that there may be more than one screen that could be used. Allow 15-20 minutes for this worksheet. (Pictorial and Abstract)

Formative assessment: Observe students as they work on the worksheets and make sure they have a clear understanding of what beads will fit through the screens.

Evaluate: Summative Assessment: Have the groups share their findings from both worksheets with each other and how they came to the answers that they did. As students are doing this, listen to see if they have appropriate understanding and look at their worksheets to check on the answers and if they are correct. Have the group members come to a consensus as to which answers they think are right and then go around the room and have them share what they have decided upon. Collect the worksheets for grading. (Abstract)

Expand: Students will later be graphing on paper their findings. They will show on their graph the number of screens that each bead could go through. The teacher will ask inquiry questions to the students and conduct a class discussion about what the class uncovered. Questions will be posed in order to see what students know and how they can describe it.

References:

Lawrence Hall of Science. (2000). Teacher Guide: Models & Design. Hashua, NH: Delta Education. www.usd259.org (October, 2002).

Reflection: I feel that this is a good lesson plan in that it incorporates many hands-on activities. It highlights on the multiple intelligences dealing with interpersonal skills, spatial skills, and kinesthetic skills. It requires students to work cooperatively to achieve a shared goal. It also promotes discovery learning as the children uncover new concepts as they work through a problem. There are also several chances for the students to get a concrete understanding of sorting solids. The only possible problem that I see arising from this lesson plan would be the time issue. This lesson is most likely not something that will be completed in one class session if this is a newly introduced concept. However, if done in succession to the other three lessons of this unit, students will be able to go through this activity relatively quickly.

Ideas for Integration: Students could connect this to math by making it a subtraction problem or addition problem. For example: If we had four different sizes of beads and two of those sizes fell through, how many sizes of beads do we have left? Another possibility would be to teach ordinal numbers: Which one fell through first, second, third, and fourth?