#1 Strategies for Classifying: Blooming Flowers
Grade Level and Subject: 3rd grade Science
Materials needed: White board, markers (dry erase), pens, paper, fake flowers
Objective: As a result of this lesson students will learn strategies for classifying, including how to use a graphic organizer. Students will be able to classify flowers based on their appearance and communicate the differences among the groups orally and in writing.
Introductory: I will start by asking the students what they believe classifying means and how we use classifying in real life. Then i will explain that i will show them in this lesson, strategies for classifying in everyday life. So the students will know what they will need to ask themselves i will write the following steps down on the board and have students copy them down in their notebooks. As they write down these steps i will go through a planned example with the students (classifying animals by size). When i get to question two i will introduce a graphic organizer.
1. What do i want to classify?
2. What things are alike that i can put into a group?
3. How are these things alike?
4. What other groups can i make? How are the things in each group alike?
5. Does everything fit into a group now?
6. Would it be better to split up any of the groups or put any groups together?
After that example is done i will hand out a worksheet that has the six questions and a graphic organizer. In pairs i will have students classify five rocks by their colors. Students will write down the information on their worksheets. We will discuss the results in class.
Developmental: For this part of the lesson students will be classifying fake flowers according to their appearance. Students will get into pairs and i will pass out 10 fake flowers per pair. I will circulate around and help the pairs and make sure they are following the steps correctly.
Concluding: When it looks like most students are done or when its close to the end of class i will have random pairs talk about the groups they made and why, also what they have learned about the different parts of flowers. To finish we will review the six steps of classifying and i will think back and evaluate how well each student seemed to grasp classifying and using the six steps.
