Inquiry Lesson Plan Template (with Four Ways of Thinking connection)

Teacher: Cameron DeVaughn

Content: Sustaineability. Title:
Grade Level: 5th
Persuasive Arguments About Water
Pollution: Citizen Science Game
Standards:
5-ESS3-1. Obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to
protect the Earths resources and environment.
ETS1.B: Developing Possible Solutions.
4.8.4 B Explain how human activities may change the environment.
4.3.4B. Identify how human actions affect environmental health.
Objectives (Explicit & Measurable):
Identify the causes of water pollution and what humans can do to combat the problem.
Pose a question about the local water supply.
Craft reasoned, evidence-based arguments to persuade others using established facts.
Evidence of Mastery (Measurable Assessment: formative and summative):
Formative: Choral Response - If you need a quick assessment of student understanding, ask students
to respond to a series of questions as a class. Choral response encourages all students to be actively
engaged in the assessment process.
Summative: Performance Task - students are asked to complete a task that will test a specific set of
skills and/or abilities and determine what the students knows and are capable of doing.
Sub-objectives, SWBAT (steps that lead to completion of objective; sequence from simple to more
complex):
Students will discover that pollution is not always visible by conducting reserch.
Lesson Summary and Justification: (summary gives detailed information about what students are
doing. Justification why is this lesson being taught) Students use resources to practice crafting reasoned
arguments and explore water ecology and the effect of humans on the environment. Through an online game,
students will learn about the causes of water pollution in a lake and pose a question about the local water
supply to community residents.
Background Knowledge: (What do students need to know prior to completing this lesson) In
preparation for the lesson, preview the game and the movies associated with this topic. You want to
familiarize students with the Water Supply and Humans and the Environment topic in order to build
background knowledge. abra
Misconception: The ocean is infinite so pollution is not a problem. My personal actions dont impact the
oceans. The oceans resources are limitless.
Process Skills: The ability to make good observations is essential to the development of process skills:
communicating, classifying, measuring, concluding, and predicting.
Four Ways of Thinking connection: Lesson plan incorporates future thinking because we're asking the
students to think ahead and dig deep to the root of the problems. As the students answer questions like; who
they think is responsible and what are students doing to contribute to the problem they think about the future.
Safety: Basic computer safety.
Inquiry Questions:
1. Explore: who students think is responsible for the various methods of pollution in our water? Is there
anything that students are doing as an average citizen to contribute to the problem?
2. Elaborate: Is there anything they can do to help?
Key vocabulary:
Materials:
1. Population
1. Computers
2. litter
2. Chapter 11, In the News: Ripped From the Headlines"
3. hazardous
3. Graphic Organizer
4. waste
5. conservation

6. biodegradable
7. reduce
8. recycle
Engage - In this section you should activate prior knowledge, hook student attention, pose a question
(IQ#1) based on your lesson objective that students will seek to answer in Explore.
Teacher Will: Ask students what they
Students Will: Brainstorm how water becomes polluted on a
know about water pollution. Encourage pieace of paper.
students to brainstorm how water
becomes polluted. You may want to
Watch the video water pollution movie
record their ideas on the board.
Play the Water Pollution Movie for the
class.
Best Teaching Practice Strategy/Differentiation/ELL and Teacher Notes: Provide a breif description of
the movie for those ELLs that may not have understude the focuse of the movie.
Explore - In this section students should take the lead and actively use materials to discover information
that will help them answer the question posed in Engage. Teachers may choose to give steps to follow,
especially for younger students, but the goal is for students to discover some or all of the sub-objectives of
the lesson.
Teacher Will: Invite students to revisit
Students Will: look back over their brainstorming notes to make
the notes from their brainstorming
chances based of the new information presented.
session and make changes based on
what they learned in the movie. Ask
Write down their thougths to the 3 questions preseted.
students who they think is responsible
for the various methods of pollution. Is
there anything that students are doing as
an average citizen to contribute to the
Pair up and work on the Citizen Science Game for 15-20 mintues.
problem? Is there anything they can do
to help? Write down the questions on
the board.
Inform the students that they are using
Future Thinking stratagies and problem
soliving.
Tell students they will use an online
game to explore the ways young people
can help restore polluted bodies of water
to health. Pair students up and provide
15-20 minutes for them to explore the
Citizen Science game with their
partners. They will not have a chance to
finish the game, but can save their
progress.
Best Teaching Practice Strategy/Differentiation/ELL and Teacher Notes: Notes; the teacher writes very
clear and short directions for assessments and other activities in the lesson. If a student gets off track the
teacher tell the student to look back at the directions so that he/she remembers what to do. The teacher makes
sure it is silent during independent work to reduce the chance of the student being distracted.
Notes: If needed decuse the definition of Future Thinking. Many believe that Future Thinking is the ability to
envision scenarios for a desired future. Others think that it's more systematic.

Explain In this section students share what they discovered, teacher connects student discoveries to
correct content terms/explanations, students articulate/demonstrate a clear and correct understanding of the
lesson sub-objectives by answering the question from Engage before moving on.
Teacher Will: Talk with students about Students Will: discuse what they learned while playing the game.
what they learned during game play.
Guide students to make connections
between what they learned in the movie
and what they experienced through the
Read page 11 from the Citizen Science Curriculum.
game.
Pass out page 11 "In the News: Ripped
From the Headlines" from the Citizen
Science Curriculum and give students
time to read it independently or
collaboratively. Project page 11 on the
board so the class can see it.

Volunteer to share what the article was about.

Ask a volunteer to summarize what they

read. Discuss the news articles they
found and their relevance.
Best Teaching Practice Strategy/Differentiation/ELL and Teacher Notes: For ELL students the teacher
will orally reads page 11 "In the News: Ripped From the Headlines"and any other assesments.
Elaborate In this section students take the basic learning gained from Explore and clarified in Explain
and apply it to a new circumstance or explore a particular aspect of this learning at a deeper level. Students
should be using higher order thinking in this stage. A common practice in this section is to ask a What If?
question. IQ #2
Teacher Will: Explain that students will Students Will: reflect on the question asked. After write down a
have the chance to research a question
few sentences decribing what they would want to hear.
that is important to their local water
supply. Ask the students, if you were to
write their congressional representatives
to persuade them to improve the water
supply condition. What would you want
to hear from them?
Have the students write down their
thoughts on a piece of paper.
Best Teaching Practice Strategy/Differentiation/ELL and Teacher Notes: For ELLs the teacher will
allow the student to draw pictures for the assessments and during the elaborate section.
Evaluate In this section every student demonstrates mastery of the lesson objective (though perhaps not
mastery of the elaborate content). Because this also serves as a closing, students should also have a chance
to summarize the big concepts they learned outside of the assessment.
Teacher Will: Assess student learning by having the Students Will: Complete a graphic organizer on
class complete a Graphic Organizer independently.
water pollution.
Afterward, invite students to share their responses
with the class. You may want students to use the
Use the back of their paper to reflect on ways to
back of their papers to reflect on the different ways
combat water pollution.
they can combat water pollution. Encourage students
to use information they learned through the movie
and the game.
Closure: Students will be able to Identify the causes of water pollution. With a fouce on what humans can do
to combat the problem. Students posed questions about the local water supply.Encourage students to research
ways they can continue making a difference in their communities.