Full STEAM Ahead: Can you undo water pollution?

Can you undo water pollution?

First Grade Lesson Plan

Teacher: Mrs. Yandell

Date: 11/30/16

Overview & Purpose

The first graders continue to learn about different types of communities and community helpers.  In this activity, students will learn about water pollution and  how they can help prevent oil spills.  Students will have a hands on opportunity to see how oil and other pollutants affect our environment, and decide if you can truly undo water pollution.    

Education Standards

1. SS:N:1.4 The students will describe how the work that people do (police officer, fire fighter, soldier, mail carrier, baker, farmer, doctor, and teacher) benefits a neighborhood.

Objectives

1. How pollution affects our neighborhoods and communities?
2. How can we prevent pollution?
3. What type of community helpers research new ways to prevent pollution?
4. Can you undo water pollution?

Materials Needed

1. Garbage
2. “Oil Spill” book
3. Plastic containers
4. Water
5. Cooking Oil
6. Gloves, Strainer, Coffee filter

Verification

Steps to check for student understanding

1. Did your group work well together?
2. Were you able to undo the water pollution?
3. How can we prevent water pollution in our communities?

Activity

Describe activity that will reinforce the lesson

In this activity, we will start by reading the book “Oil Spill.”  We will discuss ways to prevent pollution in our community, and how we can be caretakers of our environment.  In groups, students will have a hands on opportunity to try and undo water pollution.  

Adapted by giron.life.blogspot.com

Can You Undo Water Pollution? Recap by Jessica Yandell

This STEAM activity was too much fun, but I must say it was a little messy! One of the first grade integrated unit topics is on community helpers, which is why I thought it would be a good idea to show the students how scientists work hard to protect our community from pollution.  After we read the story “Oil Spill,” we learned that we do not have to be scientist to help prevent pollution, but that we can be caretakers of our community just by throwing away trash in proper containers and by turning off our lights to save electricity.  I love that this lesson integrates literature, social studies and science all in one activity!  My suggestion is to do this activity outside if possible!

After trying hard to clean their polluted water, our kids realized it is almost impossible to get all of the oil out of the water.  They agreed it is our responsibility to be caretakers of our community and prevent pollution!

Full STEAM Ahead: Ozobot Community Helpers (first grade)

STEAM  1st Grade

Lesson Plan

Teacher: Mrs. Yandell

Date: 11/16/2016

Overview & Purpose

In this activity students will learn how to give commands to the Ozobots via Ozocodes, while exploring various community helpers in our community.  

Education Standards

1. SS:N:1.4 The students will describe how the work that people do (police officer, firefighter, soldier, mail carrier, baker, farmer, doctor, and teacher) benefits a neighborhood.
2. Robotics
3. Computer Science
4. 21 Century Collaboration Skills
5. 21 Century Communication Skills

Objectives

1. Give commands to the Ozobot by Ozocodes
2. Become more familiar with the Ozocodes
3. Recognize various community helpers in our community
4. Know how to use the QR code scanners

Materials Needed

1. Blue, Red, Green Stickers
2. Poster board & Black lines
3. Ozobots
4. I pads
5. QR codes

Verification

Steps to check for student understanding

1. Did your group work well together? Did you share ideas and listen to each other?
2. Did you take turns scanning the QR codes?
3. Was your group able to give the Ozobot correct commands from the ozocodes?
4. What community helpers did you observe after scanning the QR codes?
5. How do those community helpers benefit our community?

Activity

Describe activity that will reinforce the lesson

In this activity, students will work in groups of four or five.  Each group will have one Ipad, four QR codes, two Ozobots, a Ozobot command coding chart, and a “Ozobot command board”.

Prior to the activity, the teacher should have the Ozobot “command board” already drawn out and prepared for the students.  ( I suggest laminating if they are going to be used in multiple classes)  On the command board, there should be four places the Ozobot will come to a stop ( command code (greenred)).  At each stop there will be a QR code.  

The activity:

Part 1: Have the students spend time in their groups, and each person will choose two commands off of the ozobot code chart to place on the “command board.”  (We used color stickers for this activity, because we were able to peel them off and reuse the boards)  Encourage the students to use different commands, that way they can observe different behaviors and actions the ozobot will perform.

Part 2:  Students will then place their Ozobot on the “command board” and watch their robot interact with its environment.  They will observe its different behaviors depending on the code.  Each time a robot comes to a stop (at a QR code), students will use the Ipad to scan the QR code and determine what community helper their ozobot encountered.  Students should take turns scanning the QR codes.

This is an exciting way to learn about how community helpers benefit our community!

Five Senses: Observation by Touch with First Grade

Observation by Touch

Lesson Plan for 1st Grade

Prepared by Mrs. Yandell

OVERVIEW & PURPOSE

Students will learn the importance of using their senses to make observations.  Students will use only touch to identify characteristics of objects and will practice grouping things by their observations.

EDUCATION STANDARDS

Collaboration

1. The students will understand how God created us with the abilities to experience His creation.
2. The students will use their five senses to investigate, describe, and compare objects.
3. The students will use their five senses to enhance their writing abilities.
4. The students will use their five senses to describe an object.
5. The students will recognize how they interact with their environment through their senses

Graphing

1. Students will make comparisons
2. Students will be counting, adding and subtracting
3. Students will be organizing data in a systematic way in order to discover patterns

Sorting and Classifying

1. Students will observe similarities and differences
2. Students will make comparisons of size, shape, color and detail
3. Students will relate abstract ideas to their concrete existence in the real world

OBJECTIVES

1. Discovering the importance of our five senses
2. Discovering God’s desire for our senses
3. Learning to make observations using sense of touch
4. Learning the importance of observations to identify characteristics
5. Recognizing categories of living things vs non living things

MATERIALS NEEDED

1. Blindfolds
2. 10 Objects
3. Ipad
4. Seesaw app

VERIFICATION

Using the Ipads, Seesaw app… Make a video of each group

1. What did you do?
2. What did you learn?
3. What questions did you have?
4. What makes the objects living or non -living?

ACTIVITY

Start the activity by talking about the five senses that God gave us and why they are important.  After discussing the five senses, we will then discuss the importance of touch and how it is used in our daily life to make observations of things.  Talk about how touch can be used to describe characteristics of objects, and how we use the sense of touch to explore our environment.  

The students will work at their tables, and be given a blindfold.  The will be told there are ten toy objects on their desk, and they are to explore each object by only using one of their senses, touch.  While still blindfolded, the students are to group the objects into two piles, living and nonliving based off of the characteristics they identify while touching the objects.  When they have placed all of the objects into two piles, they can take off the blindfolds and see how well they did classifying objects by using only touch.  

Students will work in pairs, using the Seesaw app to video themselves responding to the verification questions; which are: What did you do? What did you learn? What questions did you have? What classifies the objects as living or non -living?

Recap written by Mrs. Yandell:

Over this quarter, the first graders are learning about using their five senses to identify things in our environment, classifying and grouping objects, and studying what makes something living or nonliving. Over the next five weeks, our first graders will be doing STEAM activities that explore one sense each week. This activity was a great opportunity for our first graders to explore the importance of our five senses and using our sense of touch to classify objects into groups without using their other senses.

Two weeks ago, our students explored the importance of our sense of touch and how we can use touch to identify things in our environment. The first graders had a blast with this lesson because they were given the opportunity to be blindfolded, which is a big hit when to this age group. Students were asked to name things that are living and nonliving and we then we discussed characteristics about each group.  The class was split into groups, and the students participated in an activity where they were all blindfolded and given objects to touch and were told to only use their sense of touch to decide what the objects were.  Then they were to make two groups, and place the objects they thought were living in one pile and the nonliving in another.  The kids loved this activity, but I must say it was challenging for a lot of them to keep their blindfolds on, or not to peek!

The first class that did this activity, I had the students use ipads and film what their groups learned using the seesaw app.  I realized this was not the best choice for this age group, because most of the students were too excited and started to be silly on their videos.  So I changed the lesson for the other classes, and had each group take two pictures of their living and nonliving piles and share those on their seesaw app.  This approach worked out much better!

Five Senses: SIGHT with First Grade

Five Senses: Sight

Lesson Plan for 1st Grade

Prepared by Ms. Yandell

OVERVIEW & PURPOSE

Students will learn the how each of the five senses work together to help us explore the world around us.  This lesson will focus on the importance of sight.

EDUCATION STANDARDS

Collaboration

1. The students will understand how God created us with the abilities to experience His creation.
2. The students will use their five senses to investigate, describe, and compare objects.
3. The students will use their five senses to enhance their writing abilities.
4. The students will use their five senses to describe an object.
5. The students will recognize how they interact with their environment through their senses

OBJECTIVES

1. Discovering the importance of our five senses
2. Discovering God’s desire for our senses
3. Learning to make observations using sense of touch
4. Learning the importance of observations to identify characteristics
5. Recognizing categories of living things vs nonliving things

MATERIALS NEEDED

Blindfolds
Paper and Pencil
Various Objects 15

VERIFICATION

1. How do you use your eyes every day?
2. What did you do?
3. What did you learn?
4. What questions do you have?

ACTIVITY

This activity will be comprised of three parts.  

We will begin the activity in the classroom, where we will go over the function of our eyes, and talk about the importance of using sight to explore our environment.  The three-part activity will take place outside.  First, the students will be blindfolded, and be asked to draw a picture without using their sight.  

 After looking at their pictures, students will observe how challenging it is to draw without being able to see.  The next activity, students will be blindfolded, and will start at one side of the courtyard.  They will be asked to keep their blindfolds on, and walk across the courtyard to a specified tree.  This challenge will give students the opportunity to experience how important sight is for us to be able to do so many things in our daily life.  The last activity, students will sit on the ground and will be shown 15 different objects, they will be able to look at them for 15 minutes, and then be ask to close their eyes… no peeking.  When they open their eyes,  they will be asked which objects were removed from the pile, and they will be asked to describe what the pile looked like, was any of the objects moved to a different place?

Recap written by Mrs. Yandell:

The goal for this year is to teach our first graders how God created us with the abilities to experience His creation and engage them in opportunities to use their five senses to investigate, describe, and compare objects.

Last week in the first-grade classes, we did a lesson on discovering the importance of our sense of sight.  This lesson consisted of three activities, which took place outside in the courtyard. Before starting the activities, we watched an educational children's video that described how our eyes work.  What I liked about this lesson was that children were able to participate in activities where they explored their environment blindfolded, which really gave them a good perspective how important our eyesight is!

There is one thing that I changed about this lesson by the time I taught the last class.  I decided in the first activity, the students should first draw a picture of their family and draw a blindfolded picture of their family.  This was a better approach than just drawing a picture blindfolded because they had two pictures to compare and really observe how much harder it is to draw without using sight.

Tower of Babel: First Grade

Tower of Babel

Lesson Plan for Grade 1, Collaboration and Communication

Prepared by Julie Davis and Jessica Yandell

OVERVIEW & PURPOSE

Introduce STEAM to first graders by way of building towers with solo cups. The purpose of this lesson is to show students that they each have different ideas in their head and they have to work within teams to collaborate and communicate kindly and effectively to get the job done.

EDUCATION STANDARDS

1. 21st century collaboration skills
2. 21st century communication skills

OBJECTIVES

1. Introduce student contract ideas.
2. How to share responsibility in the engineering design process.
3. Being respectful of our words
4. Understanding the good of the team over their own viewpoint- how to compromise
5. How to encourage others
6. When you don’t do your part, it let’s the whole team down

MATERIALS NEEDED

1. Video clip about the Tower of Babel http://viewpure.com/WFbmVxh9wmk?start=0&end=0
2. Multiple red Solo cups
3. 2 pictures of differing towers (see below)
4. Two file folders
5. Conflict resolution baggy that includes: dice, coin, card
6. Student Contract (click here)

7. VERIFICATION

   Steps to check for student understanding
   1. After towers are done recap with the following questions:
   1. Did your team work well together today?
   1. Why or why not?
   2. Did you both work on the tower?
   3. Did you listen to each other?
   4. Were your ideas listened to?
   5. Did your team ask for help when you needed it?
   6. Did you follow your student contract page?
   7. Did your team finish the day’s assignment to your satisfaction?
   1. Why? Why not?
   
   

   ACTIVITY

   Start activity with showing the movie clip about the Tower of Babel and talk about why being able to communicate with people you work with is an important part of getting jobs done. One word on the board: TOWER.  Students are told they have to build a model of what they saw with a partner.
   Use a wide open space. Students will sit on the floor with cups between them, facing a partner across the cups from them. Behind each line of students sits a file folder standing up on the end, hiding a picture of a tower. Both pictures will portray different towers on each side of the room. Students will go look at their prospective picture and come back and describe to their partner what they saw. Students don’t realize they are looking at two different pictures and they end up building a model that is a compromise of the two different ideas.
   
   
   
   
   
   (This lesson was adapted from STEM-Infusing the Elementary Classroom by Miranda Reagan)

Lesson recap written by Jessica Yandell:

First grade STEAM project recap

This week has been fun.  Another awesome STEAM project down in the books! The first project lesson of the year for our first graders was called Tower of Babel: Communication & Collaboration.  The focus of this project was teaching the students about the importance of good teamwork and communication.  

When I entered the room, I started by asking, “what is teamwork?”  Most of the kids responded by saying, “working together and sharing ideas.”  I was relieved to hear those responses, to me, that meant I had caught their attention that today's focus was all about collaboration!  I then shared a video with the class on the Tower of Babel, Genesis 11 (http://viewpure.com/WFbmVxh9wmk?start=0&end=0).  Talk about a great way to share the gospel with young children! The children were engaged, and excited.

Before starting the project, I asked the children what they learned from the story.  Many responded, “they were not able to talk to each other,” “they left, and didn’t build the tower.”  This is where I was able to bring it all together! I told the kids that in order to finish this project they are going to have to talk with each other and also be very good listeners to one another, or else they will have a hard time working together.  

During the project, most of the students referred back to their student contract, which is playing a game of rock paper scissors to resolve their conflicting ideas.  It was hard for the groups to agree on how to build the tower, because each partner was shown a different picture of how the towers should look.  I took the opportunity to walk around to each group and watch their interactions and listen how they managed conflict.

I wrapped up the project by asking the students reflection question, such as, “did your group work well together,” and “did your tower turn out the way you wanted,” and “how did your group resolve conflict?”  I had many groups tell me that the project was hard because they had different ideas, but  they worked well together because they were able to put their ideas together to make a great tower.  After the class reflection I was able to share with the class, that each partner was shown a different picture of how the tower should look, which meant they had different ideas in their heads. I closed by reinforcing that good teamwork means sharing ideas, being good listeners, and having fun!