Fish Fertilizer Blind Study Lesson Plan

Seedling Blind Study

Grade Level and Unit: Grades 1 and 2, Wampanoag Harvest 1600

Session and Description of Lesson Tasks: Students will be given bean seeds that have been germinated. They will be planting them in either a blue or green cup. One set of cups will be given fish fertilizer and the other will not. The students will not know which cups received the fertilizer. The study is going to simulate what the Wampanoag Indians used on their crops.

Materials needed: Cups, seeds, dirt, fertilizer, and popsicle sticks.

Grouping Decisions: Students will be working as a group to discuss the study and then individually to plant seeds.  

Learning goals/Objective(s) What are your core ideas for this lesson? What do you intend all students to know and understand? I want students to understand that the Wampanoag Indians used fertilizer to help their crops grow. I also want them to understand the basics of doing a blind study.	Language Objectives? What language will you model during the lesson? What language do you expect to hear during student discourse? Blind Study Variable Fertilizer
Standards: How do the learning goals relate to the standards?
Connect and Anticipate: In what ways does this lesson build on students’ previous knowledge? What student strategies and responses do you anticipate? What misconceptions and struggles might students have? Students have been studying the Wampanoag Indians and I will be discussing with them how the Indians grew their crops. I will explain they used things like fish and seaweed to give the soil nutrients. We will then talk about how we could study if this fertilizer worked or not. Students will develop a plan on how they could do this including filling out a worksheet with their thoughts and predictions. Some students may struggle with the concept of a blind study but I anticipate that all of the class discussions we have on the subject will help them understand.
Focus Questions Consider what questions you will use to focus on students’ thinking to encourage sense-making and discourse. Launch: To introduce the activity/motivate students. How could we study if the fertilizer works? Have you ever planted something before? Explore: To assess students’ understanding and to advance their thinking as they work independently, in partners or small group What is a blind study? What is a variable? What are we trying to study? Summary: To facilitate the analysis and synthesis of ideas shared at the end of the lesson What are your predictions about what will happen to the beans that received the fertilizer and the beans that did not?

Evidence: How will you know what students understand? What evidence will you collect? (If there is an exit task, what will be its focus to inform you instructional next steps?) I will be able to check students understanding based on their responses on the worksheet. I will also be able to check their understanding based on their participation and answers during the group discussion. There will be a follow up lesson to this based on the growth of the seedlings where I will also be able to gather evidence of student understanding.

Pitfalls and Solutions:

                ELL: No accommodations are necessary for these students.

Special Ed.: There will be three teachers implementing this lesson and able to assist any students with difficulties they are encountering.

Reflection: I think this lesson went really well. The students were engaged and had thoughtful responses and questions about the study. They are excited to see if their seed received the fertilizer. In the future I would try to incorporate different seeds into the study so we could also analysis how well the fertilizer works on different plants.