Allix HutchisonUnit Plan, Part II

Introduction Lesson

Objective: Because this is an introductory lesson and students aren’t even being introduced to the word ‘weather’ until day two of the unit, I struggled to come up with a logical objective for this introduction. This is the best I could do:

By the end of this lesson, students will have a curiosity and vested interest in attempting to answer the question “Why can’t I wear my shorts in February?”.

By the end of the lesson, students will be able to know what words or phrases to use when asking their parents a question about how they pick out clothes to wear each day.

Standards: SS - - - K – G5.0.1 Describe ways people use the environment to meet human

needs and wants (e.g., food, shelter, clothing). ELA - - - K.R.CS.1 Ask and answer questions about unknown words in a text.

Task: Teacher will introduce the following dilemma to students. One of the

students in our class, Keegan, always wears shorts to school. But lately, it has been getting really cold and his mom has been making him wear pants, much to his dismay. I wonder if there’s a way that we can help Keegan know which days he can wear shorts to school and which days he has to wear pants. – This will lead to a short discussion with some student thoughts and input.

Next, the teacher will introduce the big idea to the students. The students refer to their unit “big ideas” as “driving questions.” The teacher will write the question on a sentence strip and put it at the top of the board where our driving questions are all put on the whiteboard. The big idea for this unit is: “Why can’t I wear my shorts in February?” We will be investigating this over the next few weeks.

The teacher will then read the book Oh Say Can You Say, What’s the Weather Today? out loud to the students in the format of an interactive read-aloud. We will stop at words we don’t know yet and write them on the board to discuss after the reading (or tomorrow during the definitions lesson).

Students will be sent off with a “homework” task of asking their mom/dad/guardians how they know what kind of clothes to dress them in each day? How can they tell when we are allowed to wear shorts or not? Students will report back with their answers tomorrow.

Student Thinking: Students will be thinking critically as problem solvers since I will be presenting them with a dilemma that they may have never thought about before. Additionally, the read aloud will introduce many new words to students

without explicitly defining them, so students will be challenged to discuss with others and try to infer the meanings of the words based on the context of the story.

Teaching Notes: make big idea card mark page 12 and 14 of book for key words & discuss homework question: “How do mom and dad know what kind of clothes to

dress you in each day?” (type on strips of paper and put on students as bracelets so they don’t forget)

Key Lesson: Weather Options (Day 3)

Objectives: The students will identify at least three different types of weather. Students will use their hands to create replicas and models for three different

types of weather. Students will use past experiences to help them make connections with

different types of weather.

Standards: Science - - - K-ESS2-1 Earth's Systems : Use and share observations of local

weather conditions to describe patterns over time. SS - - - K – G1.0.1 Recognize that maps and globes represent places SS - - - K – G5.0.1 Describe ways people use the environment to meet human

needs and wants (e.g., food, shelter, clothing).

Task: One day during each PBL unit, Mr. Adams invites parents to come in and

participate in various hands-on activities with the students. Parents seriously fill up all of the volunteer and donation slots on the sign-up within like an hour of when we send the email out. So for this lesson, I am relying on parent involvement to make this Think-Tack-Toe come to life in a crazy kindergarten classroom! This may seem ambitious, but I truly think this is completely feasible with how involved the parents are!

Since students learned about weather and weather words yesterday, today they will get a chance to explore different types of weather ranging from rain to wind, thunder, snow, and more. Each parent will be leading a station, and students will get to pick three stations in addition to the one that we will do all together (Musical Storm). Every station, for the most part, has some sort of art, craft, or make & take piece. I really think that kindergarteners need to be more engaged in the arts and in sensory/tactile learning, so I am hoping that this will help them to explore more instead of just being told new information.

For the musical storm, students (and parents, if they’d like) will sit in a circle on the ground. I will lead them through a serious of motions (rubbing hands together, snapping, clapping, patting legs, etc) in order so it sounds like a rain and thunderstorm. We will then have a discussion about what we heard and try to infer what type of weather sounds we just created. This will help them to analyze the different crafts and activities that they did earlier in the day by culminating in a fun review that still challenges them to think and talk with one another about weather options.

Rain – Make a rain jar to see how rain falls from the clouds.

Thunder – Hear what thunder really sounds like with this “Thunder in a Bag” activity.

Snow – read The Story of Snow with a teacher and talk about your own fun snow stories!

Wind – Make a pinwheel and learn about how it can help you measure the windiness of the weather.

Musical Storm – The whole class will do this together!

Clouds – Read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and play a matching game to learn about different types of clouds

Tornado – Create a mini tornado in a bottle!

Snack – Make a bag of snowman soup and bring it home to make on a cold and snowy day!

Snow – Make your own snow globe in a jar and shake it to see what snow flurries or blizzards look like.

Student Thinking: In order for students to fully understand each craft or activity in the think-tack-toe, they will have to make connections and inferences based on their past experiences. For example, students shaking the “thunder in a bag” bags and hearing that sound will have to be able to think back to a time when they heard thunder and relate this sound to that past experience. Additionally, the discussion after the musical storm requires them to think critically about what we just did and discern/infer which type of weather we reenacted.

Teaching Notes: - parent sign up via Sign-Up Genius- reference materials list for parent supply donations- parent directions for each station- Musical storm – rub hands, snap, clap, pat legs, clap, snap, rub hands

Key Lesson: Seasons (Day 5)

Objectives: Students will be able to identify the four seasons and give at least one

different type of weather that may be experienced during each season. Students will be able to match each season with typical temperatures in

Michigan during each season.

Standards: Science - - - K-ESS2-1 Earth's Systems : Use and share observations of local

weather conditions to describe patterns over time. SS - - - K – G1.0.1 Recognize that maps and globes represent places SS - - - K – G5.0.1 Describe ways people use the environment to meet human

needs and wants (e.g., food, shelter, clothing). ELA - - - K.W.TTP.2 Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to

compose informative/explanatory texts in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic

Task: The teacher will begin by reviewing with students about the different

weather options. Then I will introduce the idea of seasons and explain that some weather options (like snow and rain) are more likely to occur in particular seasons. I will then draw a four seasons anchor chart similar to this one, but without the months:

Next, the teacher would pull up a map and talk about how the four seasons

look different in different parts of Michigan, the United States, and even the

world. Since these students are kindergarteners, it’s challenging to go too deep into this conversation since they don’t understand the earth’s rotation, the equator, etc. But I do want to use some key words like “lake effect” to talk about the weather in different places. While looking at the map, I will ask students questions like: “What state do you think gets more snow in the winter? Michigan or Florida? What makes you think that?”

Since we talked about thermometers and different temperatures yesterday, today students are going to be given the task of taking four different thermometers and matching one with each season. (The thermometer temperatures are typical for Michigan and our area.) Students may work in pairs for this activity. I will tier this lesson by doing the following:

o Above level: The thermometers will be colored in to a certain line and labeled on the sides, but students will be asked to “measure” the temperature on their own then make an inference about the season that temperature might match.

o At level: Students will have thermometers that are colored in, labeled on the sides, and the temperature read on the thermometer will be written on top of the thermometer. After looking at the number of the temperature, students will pick which season they think the thermometer would match.

o Below level: Students will be given the same thermometer pages as the ‘at level’ students, but they will also get a sheet giving them a list of temperatures that each season might have. For example, if the temperature on the thermometer is 75 degrees, then the sheet would have a section that says “Summer = 70, 75, 80 degrees”. Students will simply find the matching temperature’s season and be all set.

I hope these make sense – I’m sure they seem confusing without actually seeing the task! Here’s a sample of something similar that I found online:

Then, as a class we will reconvene at the smart board to continue our seasons analysis. The teacher will have a smart board page with a chart split into spring, summer, fall, and winter. At the bottom of the page, there will be icons with the different weather options students learned about in the

previous key lesson. The teacher will call individual students to the smart board to move the icons into the season they think would be the best fit. We will discuss these decisions as a class to make sure we are all in agreement.

Students will finish the lesson by doing a make & take flip book about the seasons, which will give them some good review and will also allow them to color pictures and take something home to tell their parents about what we learned.

Student Thinking: Students will be asked to think critically and will be challenged in many ways during this lesson. First, students will be analyzing the way that the weather may be different in different parts of our state, nation, or world by looking at maps and trying to make inferences based on their schema. Additionally, the thermometer matching activity asks students to apply what they learned about thermometers and infer what the temperature may be during different times of the year. Finally, during the smart board activity students will be asked to talk through their decisions and come to agreements as a class about where each weather option most likely belongs on the chart.

Teaching Notes: Anchor chart – include wind, rain, snow, sun, hot, cold Prep map, ask about Michigan vs Florida, lake effect, equator, Australia with

opposite seasons (if time) Tiered lesson: Above level – John, Piper, Evan, Henrik, Brody. Below level –

Lucie, Erin, Elliot, Owen, Silas

Key Lesson: Prepare for Weather (Day 13)

Objectives:

Students will be able to determine whether a type of weather is dangerous or pleasant.

Students will be able to match given severe weather options with their icons or images.

Students will be able to discern whether or not objects are needed in one’s disaster supply suitcase.

Standards: Science - - - K-ESS3-2 Earth and Human Activity : Ask questions to obtain

information about the purpose of weather forecasting to prepare for, and respond to, severe weather.

SS - - - K – G5.0.1 Describe ways people use the environment to meet human needs and wants (e.g., food, shelter, clothing).

ELA - - - K.R.CS.1 Ask and answer questions about unknown words in a text.

Task: Teacher will begin by making an anchor chart with the words “Pleasant

Weather” and “Dangerous Weather” written on it. The teacher will define these words for the students and give one example of each (pleasant = sunny, dangerous = thunderstorm). Then she will give specific examples to students and have them vote on whether they think that weather option is pleasant or dangerous. Once we have compiled the anchor chart, I will ask students to turn and talk to a partner about what we are supposed to do in these dangerous situations. This can be very open-ended because we will be discussing these things later in the day. Here’s a sample of what the anchor chart may look like:

The teacher will do an interactive read-aloud of the book Magic School Bus

Weathers the Storm. Throughout the story the teacher will write down the unknown or new words from the text and lead students in a discussion about

what they think the words might mean and relating back to prior lessons and to the context clues from the text.

Next, the teacher will talk with the students about the different pictures and symbols that tell us about severe weather. I will pull up some of those symbols on the smart board and we will guess what they mean and talk through each of them. Then students will do a matching activity that asks them to match the safety reminders with the corresponding icon or picture. The sheet looks like the one below on the left.

After this, we will talk about how we, as people, can be prepared in case any of these dangerous weather situations happen to us. I will bring out my “Disaster Supply Kit” that I keep in the classroom and talk about each item that I have in the kit and why it is important. Then students will do a cut-and-paste activity that asks them to decide which items they should put in their disaster suitcase and which items they don’t need. Then students can bring these back home and talk with their families about making a kit of their own. It looks like the picture on the right:

Student Thinking:Students will think critically in the following ways: For the pleasant vs. dangerous weather chart, students will need to use their schema to analyze each type of weather and decide if it is dangerous or not. Additionally, students will be asked to analyzing icons and images and decide which type of severe weather it matches. Students will also be thinking critically when deciding what items are needs vs. wants in their disaster supply suitcases.

Teaching Notes: Anchor chart options: snow, hail, thunderstorm, sun, cloudy, tornado, windy,

flood, hurricane, rain

Suitcase questions: “Is that a want or a need? How would this help you in a disaster?”

Culminating Activity

Objectives:

Students will be able to orally describe the upcoming weather conditions in at least three complete sentences.

Students will be able to tell others why they can or cannot wear shorts the next day.

Standards: Science - - - K-ESS2-1 Earth's Systems : Use and share observations of local

weather conditions to describe patterns over time. Science - - - K-ESS3-2 Earth and Human Activity : Ask questions to obtain

information about the purpose of weather forecasting to prepare for, and respond to, severe weather.

SS - - - K – G5.0.1 Describe ways people use the environment to meet human needs and wants (e.g., food, shelter, clothing).

ELA - - - K.W.PDW.3 With guidance and support from adults, explore a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.

ELA - - - K.W.RBPK.2 With guidance and support from adults, recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.

Task: For our culminating activity, I came up with an original assessment in which

students will write (or imagine in their minds) and record their own forecast videos. They will work in teams of 3 for this activity, and I will be choosing teams that pair some higher-level students with some students who may need extra guidance. Students will make a short 15-30 second weather forecast beginning with the sentence starter, “You can’t wear shorts today because…” (This assessment will be in February, which is why I can assume that this sentence starter works). This sentence starter connects back to the big idea because students are literally answering the big idea question, which is “Why can’t I wear my shorts in February?”

This culminating activity will show what students know about temperature, weather, seasons, forecasting, and severe weather by having them talk about them in their weather forecast. We will record these forecasts and put them on Seesaw for parents to watch. We will also show them to the school at the end of the day so that students have an authentic audience for their activity.

Student Thinking:Students will be thinking critically because they must first research the upcoming weather and predict what the weather will be like the next day, but they also have to verbally describe the weather and tell the audience how to prepare for the weather (ex: what to wear, extra necessities like umbrellas, etc.) Students will also have to collaborate with their group mates to create a video together as a team.

Teaching Notes: Avoid grouping together – Owen L, Ryan, Gabe, Elliot

Rubric notes – 15-30 seconds long, at least three complete sentences, forecast the weather, tell how to prepare for weather, take turns as team