I taught my last lesson at Brigham last Tuesday. I taught
this lesson with three other teachers. We taught it to a group of four
kindergarteners, so there was one teacher per student. We taught these students
an engineering lesson. Our goal was for the students to grasp the concept that
when they are building tall buildings, they need to have a wide, sturdy base in
order for the tower to stand tall.
The standard this lesson was focused around was NGSS
Standard K-2-ETS 1-2. Develop a simple, sketch, drawing, or physical model to
illustrate how the shape of an object helps it function as needed to solve a
given problem. To meet this standard, we had the students build towers using
straws and pipe cleaners. We started off by showing the students pictures of
large towers and asking them what the towers had in common. It took some
prompting from us teachers, but eventually the students recognized that all the
towers had a wider bottom than top. Then the students were able to make their
own towers. We gave each student 15 pipe cleaners and 10 straws. Some of the
pipe cleaners were cut in half so they could be used as supports. Then each
teacher paired with a student since there were equal amounts of teachers and
students.
While the students were building, they often forgot that the
goal was to make sure that the tower stood on its own. For example, I was holding
up my student’s tower for her as she was building it, but when I let go, it
fell down. Then we worked together to strategize how to make it stand up on its
own. We looked at the pictures again to see what those towers had that our
tower was missing. Eventually the student I was working with recognized that
she needed to give her tower a stronger base. She added supports to the base to
help the tower stand. One boy did not understand the idea of the supports. It
appeared that he was trying to make his tower as long as he could, but it did
not stand at all. This could be due to the fact that he is an ELL student, so
he might not have completely understood what the word tall meant verses the
word long. When we noticed him making a long tower, one of the teachers should
have explained the word tall again to him.
We made the tower building activity into a competition for
the students. At the end, they were all
excited to compare each other’s towers. The girl who I was working with won the
competition because her tower had the best base. I did not move much towards my
original goal during this lesson, but I was able to ask some students about
what language they spoke at home. I asked a girl and a boy what language they
spoke at home. Both said they spoke Spanish with their parents. This made me
happy that they are continuing to learn English while still practicing their
native language at home and in school. Overall,
working with these students at Brigham has been a great experience for me. I
wish I could have moved closer towards meeting my goals, but I definitely have
made some progress. I look forward to having more experience with English language
learners in the future.
EXCEEDS: I included the NGSS standard that we used in our lesson. I also included a picture of a tower that is similar to one that the students in my group created.
