By Anne Barbier, Sarah Parrish, Vanessa Wade, Pam Wilson
Date: Monday, November 17, 2008 / Topic: The Necessity of Water
Grade Level: 8
School: Ryerson Community School / Times: Period 3 & 4 (Room 36)
Period 6 & 8 (Room 41)
Curriculum Expectations:
Math:
- solve multi-step problems arising from real-life contexts and involving whole numbers and decimals, using a variety of tools and strategies.
- research, describe, and report on applications of volume and capacity measurement.
- solve problems that require conversions involving metric units of area, volume, and capacity.
Science:
- evaluate personal water consumption, compare it with personal water consumption in other countries, and propose a plan of action to reduce water consumption to help address water sustainability issues.
Assessment Strategies:
- Observation of students participation
- Using a checklist to check students who are on task
Accommodations and Modifications:
- Students working below grade level can complete one of the rows from the Water Log.
- Extension: Have extra examples for students who are done the math exercises quickly.
Resources: / Outline:
- write instructions on board and keep it up on the board until the actual lesson / Pre-lesson (a few days before the lesson):
- Introduce the idea of "rain catching".
- Ask students why people would want to catch rain?
- Ask them how much rain they think they could collect in one weekend?
- Have students put out a rain catcher over the weekend, measuring, at home, the amount they were able to collect.
- Ask them to bring in the water and/or the container they collected the water in on the Monday.
- Before the class starts have “clean water facts” up on the board
- Have a sample of what we (teachers) were able to collect over the weekend.
- Have three 5m lines of tape on the floor with desks all around the perimeter of the classroom.
- Have 6 different sized jugs (3L and 5Ls) filled with water. / Introduction:
- Tell the students the agenda for the day:
· The Importance of Water
· Volume and Capacity Conversions
· Water Logging
· Walking the Water Line
· Reducing Water Consumption
- Ask the students how much water they were able to collect over the weekend.
- Show our sample of water if students did not bring theirs in.
- Discuss what made it easier, or what might have been a more effective way to collect water.
-Go over clean water facts with the students asking them what they think about the numbers (percentages).
· 70% of the earth’s surface is covered with water
· 17% of the world’s population lack access to clean drinking water.
· On average 4,700 people die everyday due to a lack of clean drinking water.
- Explain to students that this is a reality for people living all over the world, inclusive of Ontario.
- Ask students if they could imagine what life would be like without pumped, piped or a treated water supply.
- Mention that we’re going to be talking about personal water consumption later, but first we’re going to work on some math: how we convert volume and capacity.
- milk carton
- have different sized containers (orange juice jugs, water jugs, laundry detergent jugs, etc…) / Middle (Part I) – Volume and Capacity Conversions
- Have student pull out their math notebooks.
- Ask students what the difference is between volume and capacity.
- Write down their definitions on the board and have the students write down the definitions into their notebooks.
- Ask students how many ml are in 1L (1L = 1000ml).
- Drawing a cube on the board, and going through all of the steps of the calculation, ask students how many cm³ are in 1m³.
- Explain that they can use these relationships to convert between volume and capacity measurements as well.
- Write down that 1 cm³ = 1 ml; 1 m³ = 1000L; 1000 cm³ = 1L explaining the reasoning behind it.
- Show students a milk carton and ask them to guess how man L it holds.
- Give the dimensions of the milk carton (7 cm x 20 cm x 7 cm).
- Go through V calculation of milk carton (rectangular prism).
- Show how this applies to conversions on the board.
- Hold up different sized jugs.
- Ask students to guess how many Ls each jug can hold.
- Give students the actual amount and ask them to convert the amounts (L) into cm³, following the conversion formulas on the board.
- Write down the questions on the board so students have a visual guide.
- Walk around with a checklist to see which students are on task/understanding the instructions.
- Have students who complete the questions quickly work on two more conversion questions.
- Take up the answers as a group having students come up to the board to write down their answers.
- Water Log handout / Middle (Part II) – Water Logging
- In table groups, have the students discuss their individual water needs, estimating how much water they think they use (in L) each day.
- Hand out “water log” handout, and explain how they can actually calculate their personal water consumption (in L) on a daily basis.
- Walk around assisting students through the task.
- Ask the students to then estimate their entire family’s water consumption.
- Ask them to then estimate how much water they would have to collect for a week.
- Ask them where they would store all of that water.
- Remind students about the exercise of collecting water.
- Ask them what they would do if they could not collect enough rain water for their family.
- Ask them what they would do if the nearest water source was kms away?
Middle (Part III) – The Water Line
- Explain to students that in some places people have to travel over 6 km to get to the nearest drinkable water source and back.
- Direct the students’ attention to the taped lines on the floor.
- Explain that each line is 5m.
- Have three volunteers come to the front of the classroom, explaining that the task is to “walk the water line” holding jugs filled with water.
- Have the volunteers walk the line as many times as they can (stop them at 50) carrying the jugs.
- Using one of the volunteers numbers as an example, have the class determine how far he/she walked.
- Now have the students try to calculate how many more times the student would have had to walk to reach 6km.
Conclusion – Water Conservation
- Ask students to brainstorm ways that they could try to conserve their water use at home or at school.
- Have students look at their water log, eliminating or decreasing any amounts they can think of.
Follow-Up
- On a subsequent day, have a lesson organized around the book Ryan and Jimmy by Herb Shoveller.
Reflection:
1) Thoughtful consideration of the lesson: how did I prepare this lesson? What did I think about to get myself ready?
In regards to the curriculum, we considered the AT's long range plans in math and other subject areas (in our case we looked at science as well). We designed the lesson around the students as learners, making sure the lesson is interactive and engaging for the students. At the conclusion of a pre-lesson we asked students to complete a pre-class homework assignment and modeled the homework assignment ourselves. We prepared for multiple intelligences including linguistic, logical/mathematical, visual/spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, and naturalistic. We ensured there was ample space available for the activities planned after the desks were arranged around the periphery of the classroom. We had the required materials ready and the classroom set-up for the activity.
2) Understanding the needs of the children in myclassroom:
We implemented differentiated instruction. For students working at the grade level and above we created an extension of two additional questions that the students could answer if the main task was completed early. For students working below the grade level we used visual and oral instruction and a modified lesson. Students could complete one row of the chart instead of the entire chart and still be on task. For ELL students a peer translator explained the instructions.
3) What happened during the lesson? Whatwere some surprises?
When running the lesson the first time we noticed that it was too wordy and less interactive.A power-point presentation concluded the lesson. It took longer to present than we had anticipated and we ran overtime by 5 minutes. We were surprised by how many of our examples could be seen to marginalize the demographic we were teaching to. We had failed to include the issues around access to clean water at the local level.
Many students commented that they thought that it looked like it would be a fun class as they walked into the classroom with the different table configuration and the obvious activity set up in the middle of the room. So they looked eager. One of the students said it was easy to do the conversions between volume and capacity so long as they had the formula. In response to the question, how would we find the clean water we need every day? A student answered “from snow.” Students were asked to experiment for one day. They were asked to use only the amount of clean water they think they could carry 3 kilometers (e.g., one bucket full) – for one day. When asked, what would thy use it for first, a student said that they would shower (forgetting that they would need to drink and eat).
4) Three things we did well:
We worked well as a team. We were organized and well prepared. We demonstrated good classroom management (we were walking around when other studentteacher was talking). We kept the attention of the students by catering to multiple intelligences in our activities and visuals. We discussed our assessment strategies with the class. Our formative assessment strategies included observation and anecdotal notes. Our summative assessment consisted of a flexible worksheet. Also, the content will be included in a test later in the term.
5) Three thingsthe students did well:
Students completed the pre-class homework. Students remained ontask, listened attentively, and transitioned from one activity to another smoothly. There were minor behavioural problems with a few students. They eagerly participated in class discussions and activities, and asked amazing questions throughout.
6) If I taught this lesson again, I would change:
We did, in fact, get the chance to teach this lesson again. We changed the lesson so that the hands-on activity was longer. We decided to cut out the power-point presentation, opting instead to brainstorm about conservation with the use of a mind map. We asked more open-ended questions around the activities, including opening and closing discussions. We amended our language so that we weren't talking about only developing nations not having access to water. We discussed local water shortages, like the issues around the contamination of Walkerton’s water supply. In between lessons we discussed the need for more formative assessment strategies. We decided on adding a checklist that kept track of what students were doing. We would have grouped those working on the handout designed for our ELLand below-grade level students together with a teacher.