Lesson Plan for Henrico 21 Awards

Teacher Name: ******

Lesson Title: Growing Plants Design Challenge

Target Grade/Subject: !st Grade/ Science

Length: 1 hour initial project, 30 minutes for sharing at another time

Technology Use

Tools and Resources

Students need a good selection of recycled materials to use in their projects (The materials and tools are listed in the students design brief handouts…attached on page 3). We also used a digital camera to take pictures of their projects, a computer to upload the pictures, and the program Pixie to label their pictures. They also need a printer to print out their pictures. To test the criteria of their projects, students will need unifix cubes as a non-standard unit of measurement.

Evaluation Procedure

Essential questions or objectives:

  1. What are the four parts of a plant?
  2. Where are the four parts of a plant located on a plant?

This lesson comes from the Science SOL 1.4 (life processes of plants) but also includes Science 1.1 (investigations), English 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 (oral language), Math 1.12 (measurement) and Technology 1.1, 1.2, and 1.7. It is considered a children’s engineering project.

Assessment of objectives:

At the end of this activity the students will turn in their brainstorming sheets along with their plant and the computer print out of their labeled plant. The teacher will have a rubric to fill in for each project. The rubric consists of the following criteria: Did the plant include all four parts of a plant? Was it able to stand alone? Did it use at least three different materials? Was it taller than 8 unifix cubes and shorter than 20 unifix cubes? The teacher will also use the computer pictures to see if students labeled their plant correctly. These expectations were presented to the class before they began their brainstorming and the rubric will be filled out as each student presents their projects to the class. During the class presentations, each student group must also be able to prove that their project meets each criteria by measuring their flower with unifix cubes and also by pointing out each criteria to their classmates.

Lesson Development

Process/Tasks :

  1. This lesson is done at the end of a unit on plant life. Students are handed their “Parts of a Plant design brief”(attached to this lesson plan on page 3) and it is read and gone over as a class. Teacher will explain the activity of designing and creating a flower using recycled materials previously collected (materials listed on the design brief). The flower they create must have four parts (stem, leaves, roots, blossom). It must be able to stand alone, use three different recycled materials, and meet certain size requirements. They will individually brainstorm their ideas of how they might build their flowers using the space provided on the back of their design briefs. The materials will be out on tables so they can have these as visuals to help in their brainstorming. The teacher will encourage the students to label their brainstorming with the different materials they might use.
  2. Teacher puts the class into groups of two and they are to discuss their brainstorming ideas and decide on a final solution of how they are going to build their flower. They must work together to come up with what they think would be the best solution to meet all the criteria in the design brief. Students are encouraged to work out their problems on their own and teacher should not give suggestions.
  3. Students start building using materials and tools. Again, the Teacher should not give suggestions. Students must use problem solving and teamwork to fix any possible problems they might run into.
  4. Once flowers are finished they are to use the digital camera with the teacher’s help to take a picture of their flower.
  5. Together with the teacher they upload this picture to the computer, placing it in their student folders to upload it into the program Pixie.
  6. Using the program Pixie, students are to label their pictures with the four parts of the flower. They use the arrow tool to point to the part and label it with the text tool. They print out this picture and turn it in, along with their flowers and brainstorming.
  7. Once this activity is completed, students will have the opportunity to share their designs with the class. They will present their flowers along with the pictures of the labeled parts to the rest of the students. Teacher should ask specific questions of “What problems did you run into while building your flower?” and “What would you do differently next time?” They will also measure their flower in front of the class to prove it meets the size requirements and point out how they meet all of the other criteria.

I completed this lesson plan with my class and the results were unbelievable to me. Their completed projects were beyond my expectations and I am so proud of my students work. I had several groups who had to overcome many problems and I was amazed at their problem solving. One group actually compromised after 15 minutes of arguing. They could not decide which persons plan they wanted to use and asked me several times to help them out. I had to keep saying that they needed to work out their problems on their own. After talking about it they decided to use parts of each plan and came up with a wonderful flower that was a true collaboration. They were so excited and proud of their work as well and could not wait to share with their classmates what they had done. I had one group who actually figured out a way to show that roots grow underground by using bendy straws through the hole of a box top. Their stem was the straws growing through a hole in the top and if you lifted up the top the bendy part of the straws was under it and represented the roots. Since doing this project in class they ask on daily basis if they can design and create other things out of recycled materials and have truly taken control of their own learning.