Bluefield State College

Daily Lesson Plan (Template)

Name: Ashley Folden Date: 02/10/17 and

02/17/17

Subject: Science Topic: Volume, Pitch,

and Distance

Grade: 1st Length of Lesson: 2

days with 35 minutes

Introduction (Essential Question): How can we change volume and pitch?

Standard: General Science Content
Cluster: Waves: Light and Sound, Structure and Properties of Matter
Objective:
1st - S.1.GS.1 Students will plan and conduct investigations to provide evidence that
vibrating materials can make sounds and that sound can make materials vibrate.
1st S.1.GS.4 Students will use tools and materials to design and build a device that
uses light or sound to solve the problem of communicating over a distance. *

Specific Objective: Students will conceptualize and demonstrate what volume an d pitch is
as well as how it can be changed to solve the problem of communicating over a long
distance.

Method(s): The lesson will first take place in whole group instruction. There will be a lot of
direct instruction for safety and fun and experimenting in guided practice. There will also
be a formal assessment to see the students knowledge after the lesson has taken place to see
if they have an understanding of the essential question and can demonstrate the specific
objective.

Materials:
Tone Generator
Aluminum-foil ball
Washer
Jumbo paper clip
Pencil
Sting about 250 cm, 40 cm
Metal spoons
Paper cups
 Masking tape
Scissors
Big Book on Sound and Light
Notebook sheet 7, String cup telephones

Direct Instruction: Direct instruction will begin with the teacher reviewing what the
previous science lesson from the previous weeks (sound/vibration, and light/shadows). The
teacher will then tell the students that the days science lesson will be about shadows. The
teacher will write the focus question How do we change volume and pitch, and how can
we use sold to communicate over long distances? on the board. The teacher will then ask
the students what they think of when they hear the words volume and pitch. The teacher
will then explain to the students that volume means how loud or soft a sound is. The
teacher will then ask the students where they have heard the term volume before such as
the TV remote or turning the classroom volume down. The teacher will then introduce
different instruments such as the xylophone and the one string guitar and will play them
for the students and the class will discuss the different volumes they create. The teacher will
discuss what the instruments were doing when they made the sounds, how the sounds were
made loud or soft, and will also review how the sound stops when the vibration stops
because we need vibration to create sounds. The teacher then asks the students again how
we can loud and soft sounds and what the name for having loud and soft sounds is
(volume). The teacher will then introduce the changes in pitch. The teacher will remind the
students of the book fiddles that were made and how there were different sounds. The
teacher will then compare the different pitches one came here from the tone generator. The
teacher will help the students distinguish what sound has a high pitch and what has a low
pitch. The teacher will also cover how there are medium pitches and will use the parts in
choir as an example. The teacher will then discuss with the students how they can make
high and low pitched sounds with things around them. Then teacher will then go over all
the supplies needed for when making the spoon-gong systems and the string-cup
telephones. The teacher will help with the majority of the assembly and will be super hands
on to make sure the students are putting the materials together so that the class will have
the same desired results. The teacher will also read a portion of the big book after the
investigation has been completed to recap the experiments and the lesson learned.

Guided Practice: The guided practice will consist of all the discussions the class will have
about what volume and pitch is as well as how it can be changed, and the types there are.
The guided practice will also consist of creating the spoon-gong systems and the cup-
telephone systems. The spoon-gong is created by poking a hole in the bottom of the cup
with a pencil, pulling a string through, using masking tape for the string to stay in place,
and then tying the metal spoon onto the end. The spoon-gong will demonstrate how sound
is created and how sound travels. The spoon-gongs will be transformed into the cup-
telephones by cutting the spoons off and attaching the two partners cups and strings
together with masking tape. The cup-telephones will demonstrate communication over
distances and how the sound is made and changed between the distances. The class will be
putting these instruments together and will be testing how they work and how they define
volume and pitch, how they can change the volume and pitch, and how they can be used to
communicate over long distances. The class will also be using the proper safety precautions
and will be assembling and dissembling and packing the supplies safely and in the proper
way.

Differentiation: The differentiation for this lesson will be the visual learners seeing how the
materials are constructed. There will also be differentiation in having the auditory leaners
hear the directions, hear the changes in volumes and pitches, be able to hear vibrations and
communications. This is an extremely important lesson for auditory learners. Also, there
will be a ton of learning for the kinesthetic learner through assembling the different
materials for the spoon-gong systems and the cup-telephone systems. The students will need
to use their psychomotor skills in order to complete the investigation.

Lesson Closure: The lesson will close with the teacher reviewing the definitions, causes, and
types of volume and pitch. The teacher will also review how sounds can be used to
communicate over long distances. The lesson will close also by the class reviewing what the
instruments they made did and why they did the things they did, as well as how they could
have been changed and how they can be applied through real life settings. The lesson will
also close by the students performing the independent practice and the teacher and the
teacher walking around and checking the papers for the formal assessment to see if the
students have an understanding of the specific objective.
Independent Practice: The independent practice will consist of the students receiving a
handout for their science notebooks (Notebook sheet 7). The handout will consist of a
picture of cup-telephones that the students made. The students will glue the sheet in their
notebook and will write the date of the experiment. The students will then answer the
question with writing a statement to answer the question How can you communicate over
long distances using sound?
Assessment: The first assessment will be an assessment of participation and listening skills.
A second visual assessment will take place during the whole group activities. There will be a
lot of visual assessments because this is a hands on activity and safety is a major concern.
This will also be an auditory assessment to see if the students are creating the sounds and
performing the communication tasks in order to comply with the specific objective. The
third assessment will be the journal entry that the students will complete on their own, and
will show if they have an understanding of the essential or focus question, if they can
identify how sound can change in volume and pitch and how it can be used to communicate
over long distances. If the student has written a statement to explain how volume and pitch
change, and how sound can be used to solve the problem of communicating over a long
distance then the student has mastered the specific objective.

Reflection: This lesson was originally planned to take place during one class period but
then needed to be taken into two class periods due to other school engagements. The first
setting the students observed the spoon-gong and the class reviewed and discussed the
vocabulary such as volume, sound source, and sound receiver. The students also
demonstrated the spoon-gong in pairs. The first lesson was mainly demonstration and
discussion. With the second lesson the class reviewed the spoon-gong as well as the
vocabulary words. The class then discussed how we can communicate over long distances.
My mentor teacher suggested that we pre-make the cup-telephones because of the time
constraints we had, so that is altered from the lesson but worked out because the cup-
telephones needed a lot of repairs that took a lot of time. The students used the cup-
telephones to communicate over a distance. The only problem with the cup-telephones were
that they were very fragile. The students were told to keep the string tight so that the sound
could be transferred from cup to cup. However, the students often pulled a little too tight
and the string would break free from one of the cups and hand to be re-taped. I think using
better tape and string and stronger cups would have helped, but I used the supplies that the
FOSS system supplied. The students really loved the second lesson and it took practice to
get them to hear the sound from one cup to their partners. I even made enough cup-
telephones for each student to take one home and practice with. The students also needed a
little more help with answering the essential question on their science journal entry so I did
provide them with a scaffolding sentence where they filled in portions such as what we did
and using vocabulary terms to answer the questions. Also, this lesson was a great way to
show a different form of differentiation. The differentiation for this lesson showed how all
different types of learners can learn best. I feel that a lot of students in todays time are
auditory and kinesthetic learners because they are also doing things with sound and hands
on when it comes to the technology they use for games on tablets or gaming systems. Plus,
with science the learners need to be able to hear how they work as well as manipulate the
materials to get different effects. A hands-on differentiated approach with additional
auditory and visual aides made for a fun learning experience for both the students as well
as myself.