1st Grade Science in the Toy Box Unit

1^st Grade Science in the Toy Box Unit

Section 2, Lesson 3: Gone With the Wind

Teacher Resources:

Sail My Car Data Sheet (Adobe^® Reader^® PDF)
Sail My Car Data Sheet (Microsoft^® Word^®)

Essential & Unit Questions* ¹

Benchmarks ²

Formative and Summative Assessments ³

Using Assessments to Monitor Student Learning

11A(K-2)#1: Most things are made of parts.

11A(K-2)#3: When parts are put together, they can do things that they couldn't do by themselves.

Teacher observations of students constructing sail cars (See page Activity Tips on page C27 in Teacher's Guide.)

Do students know that different parts are needed to make their cars with sails?

9B(K-2)#2: Sometimes changing one thing causes a change in something else.

11C(K-2)#3: Things can change in different ways such as size, weight, color and movement. Some small things can be detected by taking measurements.

12B(K-2)#1: Use whole numbers and simple, everyday fractions in ordering, counting, identifying, measuring, and describing things and experiences.

Sail My Car Data Sheet (available under "Teacher Resources" on electronic curriculum)

Discussion of experiment results, focusing on how changing the size of the sail affects the way the sail car moves.

Do students understand that changing the size of the sail affects the distance the car travels?
Do students use the data to compare the different sails?

Precursor to 12E(3-5)#2: Recognize when comparisons might not be fair because some conditions are not kept the same.

Class discussion about results and what makes a fair test (See Develop Science Processes on page C26 in Teacher's Guide)

Do students recognize parts of the experiment that stayed the same (examples: fan, car, starting point, amount of clay)?
Do students understand why everything but the size of sail needs to stay the same?

* Essential/Unit questions are major questions driving the unit. They are directly aligned with the benchmarks. No single lesson addresses each question in its entirety. By the end of the unit, students should be able to answer these core questions.

1. For conceptual benchmarks.
2. Bolded sections indicate portion of benchmark addressed
3. Unless noted as a Summative Assessment, the assessments are formative and should be used to guide teaching and learning.