Lesson 1: planting a seed (Motivational activity) (30 minutes)
Objectives: In this motivational activity the children plant some seeds. Each of them have their own plant and are responsible for it to survive In addition, they will work with technology, as they will have to create a blog where they document all the changes happening to their plants, as well as the projects developed in class. So it’s important to say that every day, students will take a photo of their growing plant to later, add the process to the blog
Key competences: Citizen competence, entrepreneurial competence, personal social and learning to learn competence, linguistic communication competence.
Materials:
Gardening tools: Plant pots, soil, seeds, water.
-Mindnode:
-digital blackboard to show the brain storming
-tablets
-blogger
This lesson will not last the entire class, it will be done after the students have finished the exam of the last contents.
We will let the children know that they are going to begin a new learning situation; but the teacher won't give them much information about it apart from the required materials in order to start working on it: they will need small pots, each student will bring their own; the teacher will provide them with some soil to fill them up. Once every student has enough soil on their pots, the teacher will give each student a seed for them to plant inside the pot. Afterwards they will water the seeds.
For the time being, the teacher and students will make a shared brain storming using mindnode asking the group: “What does a plant need?”. At first, students should infer possible answers to that question and write them in the shared map. After that,the teacher will let them know the correct answers introducing them with the learning situation: “We will get to learn why do plants need these things in order to grow, how do they grow and change, where can we find them and their uses. This seed will be mysterious, so let's try to give it what it needs until it gets to fully grow so we can discover what it is, keeping them engaged and motivated during the sessions.” Finally, the teacher will ask the students which plant they believe it is. However, the teacher will not reveal it.
Furthermore, the teacher explains that each student should create a digital blog with blogger (material 9, annex 1) where they write about this plant growth. They should include not only text but also pictures of the plant with the tablets provided in class. They will start it at the end of the class, using their tablets and the activity will be continue at the end of each class, where students will photograph its own plant.
Students will also use this blog as a portfolio, including all the activities completed in class.
Lesson 2: Introduction: Let´s get know the seasons. (2 hours)
Objectives: Understand the different seasons and their characteristics. Working in groups. To make students to make connection between seasons and the world around them and how the ecosystem depend on the season to have some characteristics or others.
Key competences: Personal, social and learning to learn competence, linguistic communication competence, citizen competence.
Materials:
-Kahoot (Material 1, annex 2):Projections of images (Material 1, annex 1), projection of videos (Material 2, annex 1),
-Blackboard
-Internet to look for information
-Tablets
AI tools (to create images about the seasons )
At the beginning of this class, students will hear a podcast (30 minutes) which introduces the seasons, relating each season with some (weather) sounds. The class should pay attention and take notes (if needed) as they are going to need the information listened. They will play a kahoot game titled “What we know about the world” (material 1: in the annex 2) using the tablets. (The kahoot will be accompanied by a photo of the seasons for children to recognise each one of them, and link them with the adjectives and qualities detailed in the podcast (material 1, see annex 1)).
After doing that, we’ll still have around 70 minutes. So, the class gets divided into four groups and each group gets assigned to one of the seasons. There would be 4 categories to be filled by each group attending to its season:
-Climate and temperature of the season
- Places where that season is longer around the year and the typical landscape
-Fauna
- Celebrations and cultural events (if there are) during that season
As soon as students finish, the teacher will explain to them what to do next: learning to edit images and to create images with Artificial Intelligence. The teacher will guide them in every step, in both exercises. When finishing the lesson, students should have the information collected in a Google Document and the IA images generated related to the information they have looked for, because on the following lesson they will still work on that.
Lesson 3: making a seasonal poster (group work + presentations) 1 hour
Objectives: Develop creativity working on what they have learnt. Learn to create artistic posters using technological resources. Work on their oral expression speaking in public.
Key competences: Linguistic communication competence, entrepreneurial competence, personal, social and learning to learn competence.
Materials:
-Computers
-Canva website. (Material 3)
Once the pupils have gathered all the information, they can start working to make a seasonal creative poster, created with Canva (material 3, annex 1) of their season, including the characteristics, the most common weather types during this season, and activities that could be related to the season (e.g. swimming during the summer, sleighing in the winter). It’s important for them to add not only the information collected, but also the IA images that they generated the day before
They will have 30 minutes to create their posters.
In the end, when everyone has finished with their posters, it is time to present them to the class. This way, everyone gets to learn about the characteristics of every season, including spring, when the mysterious grows, so students can learn more about it.
Not only is this good to share the required contents of the class, it also works on some of the key competences which are listed above. This will take the remaining 30 minutes of class.
Lesson 4: The plant's life cycle. 2 hours
Objectives: Familiarize children with the subject. Evaluate the previous knowledge. Give general information about the topic.Look for useful information on the internet. Learn how to do research using artificial intelligence in an appropriate way. Contrast information.
Key comp–etences: Linguistic communication competence, personal, social and learning to learn competence.
Materials:
-Computers
-Namoo application (material 4 in annex 1)
-Generative AI (material 5, in annex 1)
To begin with, the children should be sitting forming a circle. Once everyone is paying attention to the teacher, the tutor will ask the students some questions related to the topic, such as: “What do you know about plants? Where do plants grow? Why do you think plants are important? What is your favorite plant? Do you have some plants at home?” The answers will be written down on a forum using Paddlet by each student, for them to have a general look of their answers. We have to consider this activity will take place in a participative classroom in which every student is open to share their thoughts out loud.
This introduction will take around 30 minutes.
Now we will start with our main project: the life cycle of plants.
The teacher will ask the students again if they know how the plant (planted the first day of class) is named. If they do not guess it, the teacher will reveal it:it's a cress.”
Students will have to use computers to look for information about this plant (day it takes growing, characteristics, curiosities, …) It will take around 10 minutes.
The plant used is cress, which is a little plant that goes through the whole growing process within 10 days. The fact that it grows this quickly, makes it perfect for our project that will last two weeks.
Later, they will start learning about the life cycle of plants. The teacher will ask the students to search through an application called “
NAMOO” about the different stages of a plant’s life cycle. (30 minutes)
The teacher explains to them how to search information effectively using a generative AI (chat gpt, copilot, gemini), according to their age (the exercice is the material 2, in annex 2)
Then students will research the life cycle of plants using this tool. Then, they should contrast the information that they have found with the AI selected with the one searched in “NAMOO”, (taking into account that the information which the students have already searched for in “NAMOO” is reliable) .
Lesson 5: Buzzing through the plant
cycle:
Objectives:
Consolidate knowledge about plants life cycle through drawings and the creation
of presentation.
ACTIVITY 1
Key
competences: Mathematical competence and competence in science,
technology and engineering, digital competence ,social and learning to learn
competence.
Materials:
tablets, Canva and a app that enable them to draw (such as Drawing Pad)
A growing
plant will be observed by the students during a week. Each day , they should
draw in the tablet the life stage of the plant using Drawing Pad. Once the
plant life has finished , they will be organized in groups of 5 to collect all
the pictures of each member. After that, each group will create a
presentation in which they should classify their pictures in the different
plant life cycle ‘‘stages’’and include a brief description of what happened in
each tier.
ACTIVITY 2
Key competences:
Linguistic communication competence, digital competence, personal,
social and learning to learn competence.
Materials:
Podcast and filling gaps worksheets
The teacher
will give the students an explanation about the process of photosynthesis the
teacher can develop the explanation with this website Illuminating
Photosynthesis | NOVA | PBS(15
minutes) .In order to consolidate the knowledge, the teacher will play a
podcast (material 8, annex 1) about photosynthesis. While listening to
it, students will receive a paper on which they will have to complete sentences
filling the gaps by writing down key words (material 3, annex 2). The podcast
will be played twice. This way, we can guarantee not only that students are
paying attention, but also that they are comprehending the process. (30
minutes).
After that,
students will have to complete a crossword puzzle (material 4, annex 2) on
their computers (15 minutes).
Photosynthesis Lab Gizmo | ExploreLearning Gizmos on this webpage students can try much oxygen the plant can make in
different conditions.
Lesson
6: Plants are important!
Objectives:
Creation of a common newspaper with everybody’s articles
Key competences:
Personal, social and learning-to-learn competence, cultural
awareness competence and expression and linguistic communication competence.
Materials:
Flipsnack
and video: can you imagine a world without plants?. See annex.
This class will be dedicated to the importance of plants and the process of
photosynthesis.
First, the teacher will play a video: about how the world would be without plants and another one about the importance and uses of plants. The first video (material 6, in annex 1) shows different drawings of children, so children can feel
identified.
Right after this, the students will be told to create a newspaper article
individually for a newspaper about the importance of plants. For doing that the
students will use “Flipsnack” (material 7, annex 1), which is a website that
provides free editable newspaper templates in a large number of formats.The
article should not be too long, so they will have 30 minutes to write it. Once
they have finished, they will upload its article to google classroom. The last
15 minutes will be dedicated to teach them how the newspaper is going to be
organized, to choose together the title of the newspaper.
The ext day, the teacher will collect all the articles and show them the
eco-friendly newspaper they have created.
Lesson 7: project based learning about the life cycle of plants 2,5 hours.
Objectives:
Understand the growing process of plants. Develop creativity, fine
psychomotricity and visual learning. Learn the differences between plants in
different stages and recognise them. Develop cooperative learning through the
creation of a model. Work on oral expression though a presentation. Reflect on
what they have learnt.
Key competences:
Personal, social and learning-to-learn competence, citizen
competence, entrepreneurial competence, and linguistic communication
competence.
Material:
Craft supplies (total freedom) some examples may be: clay, paper, wire,
cardboard, pictures, coloured pencils, etc.
In the next activity, once students have finished their drawings (class 4) and
have information about the different stages of plants’ life cycles (class 5) we
can move to a bigger project:
After introducing what is about to be done (10 minutes) students will create groups (10mins) and work on a dioramaor 3D model of the plant’s life cycle using craft supplies. Each group will be in charge of representing a different phase of the plants´ life cycle. The phase assigned to each group will be chosen randomly by the teacher. (10 minutes). Each group will have freedom to develop their creativity and create a proper 3D model without strict guidance, which will enable the children to see different styles of working and creating models when they show them in class. However, the plant represented should be a cress.
The teacher will revise what the students are doing all during the process, so he
or she can check they are working in an appropriate way and reaching the
objectives.
The rest of the class hours will be dedicated to start developing and working on
the project (2h).
Lesson 8: Presentations of dioramas (1,5
hours).
Objectives:
Learning to speak publicly, foster individual and collective reflective thinking, learning to learn awareness
Key competencies:
Characteristics of plants that allow their classification in
relation to their adaptive capacity to the environment: obtaining energy,
relationship with the environment and perpetuation of the species. Digital
devices and resources according to the needs of the educational context.
Materials:
computers and the plant video game.
When each group is done with their project, they will have to present it to the
class.
To finish the project based learning, the students will reflect on what they
learned about the plant's life cycle, which stages they found most interesting,
and why. They will have to write about it individually in their own blogs or
they can make brainstorming maps and put it into the blog.
This way, the teacher and the students themselves will get to notice who
understood most of the content and who didn’t.
At the end of the class, students will be able to explore a video game that
consists of taking care of a cress plant during its life cycle (alimentation,
growing and processes), in that way students will review the content of the
learning situation. (1 hour)
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