Melanie Smith

Guided Inquiry Design Unit

LM 555 Spring 2016

1^st Grade Lesson Plans 2016

Thematic Unit: Where My Food Comes From: Foods and Animals from the Farm

Name:  Kristi Grimes and Melanie Smith

When a typical 7 year old is asked where food comes from, typical answers include “the grocery store”, “my mom”, and sometimes, “McDonald’s”.  Along with this disconnect to the source of food, child nutrition is suffering in this country because children and parents alike are uneducated on food value, production, and healthy consumption.  A unit on the foods and animals on a farm will draw children into a place and process that they may not be very familiar with, but are actually closely connected to every time they sit down for a meal or a snack. 

           

OBJECTIVES OF THE THEMATIC UNIT:

Compare ways individuals and groups in the local community and state lived in the past to how they live today. (S.S. 1.6)

Identify basic properties of objects. (Sci. 1.2)

Describe survival traits of living things, including color, shape, size, texture, and covering. (Sci. 1.4)

Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes) (ELA RF. 1.2)

Participate in shared research and writing project. (ELA 1.29)

Ask and answer questions about key details in a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media. (ELA 1.32)

The student who is information literate uses information accurately and creativity. (I.L. 3)

The student who contributes positively to the learning community and to society is information literate and participates affectively in groups to purse and generate information. (I.L 6)

·       Shares knowledge and information with others.

·       Respects others’ ideas and backgrounds and acknowledges their contributions.

·       Collaborates with others, both in person and through technologies, to identify information problems and see their solutions.

·       Collaborates with other, both in person and through technologies to design, develop, and evaluate information products and solutions.

Exploration:

Allow children to play with materials to facilitate first-hand experiences with concepts without direct instruction:

*Adding toy gardening tools, fruit toys, vegetable toys, horse, cow, pig, sheep, goat, barnyard toys, over-alls, sun hats, and gloves to home living centers, tractors and fencing to block centers

* Making a “garden” in the dry table, haystacks for snack, a barnyard in the block center with fencing, a toy barn, and animal toys

Explanation:

Use objects or pictures to establish a base knowledge of the student’s prior knowledge about this unit.  When shown pictures or objects, first ask students opinion about the pictures/objects to have a better understanding of their knowledge (prior knowledge).

Afterwards (Share, Evaluate)-Expand on those concepts with additional information and clarification.

            What are these? (Display hoe, trowel, spade, and gardening gloves)  

            What is this?  (Display fruits and vegetables)

            Have you ever tasted milk, cheese, fruits, or vegetables?

            Have you ever eaten any of these things? (Display cheese, eggs, apples, corn, peppers)   

            What is this? (Display toy tractor, toy barn)

           

·       Discuss with the students that food does not start in their kitchen, or even the grocery store.  It comes from the soil and from animals.  Seeds must be planted in the soil for things to grow.  Animals must be kept on farms for eggs, milk, cheese, and yogurt. 

·       Talk about what a farmer is and what they do.  That they do not go to a job in an office or a school, but go outside to do their job.  They do not work with computer, but with plants and animals. 

·       Show the students a seed and a plant, a chicken and an egg, tools a farmer would use. 

VOCABULARY FOCUS:

farmer, barn, tractor, cow, horse, sheep, chicken, egg, corn, potato, carrot

Other higher level terms: harvest, season

PROPS FOR CIRCLE TIME, THEMATIC UNIT DISCUSSION AND COUNTING:

barnyard toys (miniature barnyard)

plastic vegetables

plastic fruits

toy horses

toy cows

toy chickens

toy tractors

toy gardening tools

farmer dress-up clothes – over-all, hats, bandanas, gloves

barnyard puzzles

Farmer Jack cow-milking video – www.monkeysee.com

Farm Animals for Kids video – www.socraticakids.com

“F” is for Farm Animal video – www.alphabetroad.com

BOOK SUGGESTIONS:

Books:

Farm Sounds

Big Fat Hen

Cows Going Past

Around the Farm

Farm Days

Eating the Alphabet

Going to Sleep in the Farm

Interactive Books:

Touch and Feel Farm

What to See and Hear on the Farm

ONLINE BOOKS:

Tumblebooks:  Have you Ever Seen a Duck in a Raincoat?

              Our Seasons

              Farm Adventures     

Nursery Rhymes and songs:

Hey Diddle Diddle

To Market, To Market

Little Boy Blue

Mary Had a Little Lamb

Baa Baa Black Sheep

The Farmer in the Dell

This Is The Way We…

Old McDonald Had a Farm

ONLINE GAMES AND ACTIVITIES:

www.alphabetroad.com

www.pbskids.org/atthefarm

www.shepperdsoftware.com/animals/farm

www.nickjr.com/kids-games/dora-saves-the-farm/

www.first-school.ws/sounds-match

Question of the Day samples:

Have you ever been to a farm?

Do you know what lives on a farm?

Have you ever seen a cow, chicken, horse, sheep?

Have you ever milked a cow?

Do you like vegetables (name vegetables)?

Do you like fruit (name fruits)?

Do you like to eat cheese?

How about ice cream?

Do you drink milk?

Questions for discussion:

What happens on a farm?

What animals might live on a farm?

What does a farmer do?

What does a tractor do?

Is a chicken covered in fur or feathers?

What else have feathers?

Day 1 (Monday):

Dress Up – Wear Red or Orange (like an apple or orange)

Special Snack: Apple and orange slices

Open –

Tell students that 200 years ago, 90% of the American population lived on farms and produced the food they ate in their homes.  Today, only 2% of the American population produces all the fruits, vegetables, meats, and dairy that everyone in the country consumes.  With an ever-increasing population, it is important to introduce children to the source of their food.

             

Opening activities:

The following questions will draw on their prior knowledge: 

-     Where does milk come from?

-     What lays an egg?

-     When you see fields, fences, and cows, where are you? (Show pictures from books or magazines or video from YouTube)                        

-     What is your favorite food? (Give each student a sticky note and let them write or draw their answer and put it on a chart in the hallway. All 1^st graders answers will be on the same chart.)

-     Have you ever been on a hayride?  Who eats hay? 

Learning Activity (Immerse, Explore)

Day 1: Carrot number match

Materials needed:

•     orange paper in the shape of carrots (triangles)

•     strips of green paper in the shape of carrot tops (rectangles)

•     liquid glue

The teacher will have real carrots with the tops for the students to see and feel at the table, along with the book Tops and Bottoms to show students how carrots grow under the ground.  The teacher will also be leading the students in a discussion of the number and color of the materials. 

The teacher will have the “carrot” triangles with the number 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 written on them.  The students will match the number of carrot tops to the numeral written on the carrot and glue that amount of tops (green rectangles) to the carrot (orange triangle).  This is for practice with fine motor skills (handling the strips of green paper as they glue them on), number recognition, and color recognition.  The teacher will be saying the number and modeling the number with fingers and/or carrot manipulatives.  Accommodation: If needed, the students will receive one carrot at a time, the teacher will provide the number of glue dots needed, and the students will match fewer than 5. For more advanced students, addition and subtraction facts can be used.

Day 2 (Tuesday):

Dress Up – Wear Black and White or Black and White spots (like a cow)

Special Snack: cheese slices and crackers

Learning Activity (Immerse, Explore)

Day 2: Planting Seeds

Few children now experience digging in the earth, planting seeds, watering, and watching a plant grow that will one day bear their food.  Because this is an unfamiliar concept, their natural curiosity will drive their interest in a farm unit and deepen their understanding of food production.

Materials needed:

·       Plastic cup for each student

·       Soil to go in the cups

·       Seeds to be planted

·       Different types of soil to look at and to compare and contrast

·       Water

The teacher will help the students write their names on their cups. As a group, the class will look at, explore, and discuss different types of seeds, as well as what a seed needs to grow. Then the teacher will help the students put some soil into their cup, plant a seed, and add some more soil. They will then add a little water and put the cups in a sunny spot. Each day for the next four weeks (or more if desired), the students will use their science journals to keep track of how much the plant has grown.

Accommodations: The teacher will help the student plant the seed and write or draw in the journal. Alternatives include one cup per class or letting students take their cups home at the end of the day.

Day 3 (Wednesday):

Dress Up – Wear something with an animal on it

Special Snack: Barnyard animal crackers

Learning Activity (Explore, Immerse, Identify)

Day 3: Letter fill-in

Materials needed:

•     liquid glue

•     thick paper

•     crayons 

•     barn from the Barnyard Play set or pictures of barns from books or magazines

In advance, the teacher will create block letters on the paper with the glue, allowing the glue to dry over night to form a rigid border. These could be the students’ names, the unit vocabulary words, etc.   The teacher will share the barn from the play set with the students as she models the beginning sounds in barn, /b/, and shows them her example of the letter b.  The students will fill in the letters and words on their papers with crayons as the teacher models the sound of the letters and states additional words that begin with the letter.  This activity is for letter recognition, phonemic awareness, and fine motor skills. 

Accommodation: If needed, use only one letter with the rigid outline, or cut out the letters or words so no surrounding area is available for the students to color. For more of a challenge, have students decorate the word with pictures cut from magazines that start with the same letter or write words that they associate with the letter or word with which they are working.   

Day 4 (Tuesday):

Dress Up – Wear something with a plant on it

Special Snack: Ham and cheese roll ups

Day 4: Sort the eggs (Explore, Identify, Create)

Materials needed:

•     plastic eggs in 3-5 colors

•     3-5 baskets

•     laminated paper (colored paper for those needing the accommodation)

•     laminated paper eggs

•     Velcro dots

•     paper eggs

•     glue

•     one hardboiled egg for students to explore

The teacher will have an assortment of animals that lay eggs toys at her table – chicken, duck, etc. to remind the students of where eggs come from, and plastic eggs. The students will sort the eggs into the baskets by color.  The teacher will be leading the students to notice the color, shape, and texture (smoothness) of the eggs.  The teacher can also ask the student to hand her one egg, two eggs, etc. and remind the students where the egg comes from and what comes out of an egg.  Then, the teacher will guide the students in sorting the eggs with the teacher’s sample.  To create their work sample, the students will sort the eggs on paper and glue their eggs into place.        

Accommodation: If needed, the color options can be reduced to 2.  Also, the baskets and the paper could also be the color of the corresponding eggs. For more challenge, students can write a few words on each egg that they associate with food or farms.

Day 5 (Wednesday):

Dress Up – Wear Overalls and/or sun hat like a farmer

Special Snack: Yogurt with fresh fruit topping (for example, strawberries or blueberries)

Day 5 Learning Activity (Immerse, Explore, Gather)

A guest speaker from The Burritt Museum will come and speak to the 1^st graders in the LMS. She brings live chicks, pictures from the farm, tools from the farm, a pamphlet about the museum, and a card for one day of free entry. She usually speaks for about 30 minutes and leaves about a 10 minute window open for questions and exploration of what she brought with her. Each class should develop about 3 good questions to ask.

Day 6 (Thursday):

Dress Up – Wear brown (like soil), green (like leaves), or yellow (like sunshine)

Special Snack: Carrots and celery with ranch dressing

Day 6 Learning Activity:  Pig Size Sequencing (Explore, Create)

Materials needed:

•     pig manipulative

•     See and Hear toy

•     pigs small to large (cut apart)

•     sentences strips

•     glue

The teacher will share the pig toy with the students, and also share the See and Hear toy to let students hear the sound a pig makes.  The teacher will then review the terms “small” and “large” with the students, as well as other words that have similar meaning (for example, little or tiny, and big or huge).  She will share the teacher model of pig sequencing with the students.  Together, the teacher and students will put the pigs in the correct sequence from small to large on the teacher model.  Then the students will create their own pig sequence with pig cut-outs and a sentence strip.     

Accommodation: The teacher will assist the student with their sequencing, and if necessary, reduce to sequence to 3 pigs with a more significant difference in size to aid understanding. For more challenge, the teacher could put the students in groups of two and ask them to come up with their own sequencing pattern.    

Day 7 (Friday):

Dress Up – Wear the T-shirts we made at school. FIELD TRIP!! Tate Farms

Special Snack: Mini cupcakes at Tate Farms

Next week, send Tate Farms thank you note (Share/Evaluate) from the 1^st grade as a whole