UNIT TITLE

Author: Karen LoRusso
E-Mail Address: JoeJandK@aol.com
School: Lieb School, Bridgeview, IL
School Home Page URL:

INTEGRATED SUBJECTS: Mathematics, Technology, Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, Art, Physical Education

UNIT GOALS AND PURPOSE: Students will have an understanding of the term friendship. Students will also have the opportunity to learn about belonging to a classroom through the activities and cooperative groupings we use. Students will be able to name a variety of different types of insects. The assessment for this unit will be ongoing and performance based.

State Goal 1: Read with understanding and fluency.

1.B. 1a. Establish purposes for reading, make predictions, connect important ideas, and link text to previous experiences and knowledge.

State Goal 2: Read and understand literature representative of various societies, eras and ideas.

2.B. 1a. Respond to literary materials by connecting them to their own experience and communicate those responses to others.

Compose well-organized and coherent writing for specific purposes and audiences.

4.B. 1a. Present brief oral reports, using language and vocabulary appropriate to the message and audience.

State Goal 6: Demonstrate and apply a knowledge and sense of numbers, including numeration and operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division), patterns, ratios and proportions.

Demonstrate knowledge and use of numbers and their representations in a broad range of theoretical and practical settings.

6.A. 1a. Identify whole numbers and compare them using the symbols < >, or = and the words “less than”, “greater than”, or “equal to” applying counting, grouping and place value concepts.

D. Solve problems using comparison of quantities, ratios, proportions and percents.

State Goal 8: Use algebraic and analytical methods to identify and describe patterns and relationships in data, solve problems and predict results.

Interpret and describe numerical relationships using tables, graphs and symbols.

8.B. 1. Solve problems involving pattern identification and completion of patterns.

State Goal 9: Use geometric methods to analyze, categorize and draw conclusions about points, lines, planes and space.

Demonstrate and apply geometric concepts involving points, lines, planes and space.

9.A. 1a. Identify related two- and three-dimensional shapes including circle-sphere, square-cube, triangle-pyramid, rectangle-rectangular prism and their basic properties.

Identify, describe, classify and compare relationships using points, lines, planes and solids.

9.B. 1a. Identify and describe characteristics, similarities and differences of geometric shapes.

State Goal 10: Collect, organize and analyze data using statistical methods; predict results; and interpret uncertainty using concepts of probability.

10.A. 1a. Organize and display data using pictures, tallies, tables, charts or bar graphs.

Formulate questions, design data collection methods, gather and analyze data and communicate findings.

10.B. 1b. Collect, organize and describe data using pictures, tallies, tables, charts or bar graphs.

State Goal 12: Understand the fundamental concepts, principles and interconnections of the life, physical and earth/space sciences.

Know and apply concepts that explain how living things function, adapt and change.

Know and apply concepts that describe how living things interact with each other and with their environment.

State Goal 14: Understand political systems, with an emphasis on the United States.

14.C. 1. Identify concepts of responsible citizenship including respect for the law, patriotism, civility and working with others.

State Goal 19: Acquire movement skills and understand concepts needed to engage in health-enhancing physical activity.

Demonstrate physical competency in individual and team sports, creative movement and leisure and work-related activities.

19.A. 1. Demonstrate control when performing fundamental locomotor, non-locomotor and manipulative skills.

State Goal 24: Promote and enhance health and well-being through the use of effective communication and decision-making skills.

Demonstrate procedures for communicating in positive ways, resolving differences and preventing conflict.

State Goal 26: Through creating and performing, understand how works of art are produced.

Understand processes, traditional tools and modern technologies used in the arts.

26.A. 1e. Visual Arts: Identify media and tools and how to use them in a safe and responsible manner when painting, drawing and constructing.

Apply skills and knowledge necessary to create and perform in one or more of the arts.

26.B. 1d. Visual Arts: Demonstrate knowledge and skills to create visual works of art using manipulation, eye-hand coordination, building and imagination.

Understand numbers, ways of representing numbers, relationships among numbers, and number systems

•develop understanding of the relative position and magnitude of whole numbers and of ordinal and cardinal numbers and their connections;

•develop a sense of whole numbers and represent and use them in flexible ways, including relating, composing, and decomposing numbers.

•recognize, describe, and extend patterns such as sequences of sounds and shapes or simple numeric patterns and translate from one representation to another;

Analyze characteristics and properties of two- and three-dimensional geometric shapes and develop mathematical arguments about geometric relationships

•recognize, name, build, draw, compare, and sort two- and three-dimensional shapes;

Formulate questions that can be addressed with data and collect, organize, and display relevant data to answer them

•sort and classify objects according to their attributes and organize data about the objects;

•describe parts of the data and the set of data as a whole to determine what the data show.

Instructional programs from prekindergarten through grade 12 should enable all students to—

•organize and consolidate their mathematical thinking through communication;

•communicate their mathematical thinking coherently and clearly to peers, teachers, and others;

Instructional programs from prekindergarten through grade 12 should enable all students to—

•understand how mathematical ideas interconnect and build on one another to produce a coherent whole;

Instructional programs from prekindergarten through grade 12 should enable all students to—

•create and use representations to organize, record, and communicate mathematical ideas;

•select, apply, and translate among mathematical representations to solve problems;

•use representations to model and interpret physical, social, and mathematical phenomena.

This is the introductory lesson for the unit. Read the title of the book, The Very Lonely Firefly by Eric Carle. Discuss what the book might be about. Listen to the story with the class using the taped version. This would be a whole class activity. When the story is finished, introduce the broad topics of friendship and belonging. Discuss how the firefly felt when he couldn’t find any other fireflies. Compare the lonely firefly to real life and discuss how students feel when they are alone and have no one to play with. Talk about the importance of friends and belonging to a group such as a family.

Use the overhead projector and computer generated pictures of all the things in the story that the firefly thought was another firefly. Have students work in groups to put their ten pictures in the correct order. Have groups hang their pictures up in the correct order. As a whole class review the correct sequence of the things the firefly encountered in the story. Display them using the overhead projector. Have students review numbers by numbering the pictures from 1-10. Remind students that the number 1 would go next to the first thing the firefly saw and the number 10 would go next to the fireflies at the very end of the story.

Activity 3
Students will look at the websites, http://whyfiles.org/shorties/081firefly/, www.insects.org/_12, computer

www.earthlife.net/insects/-8k-Apr and www.letsfindout.com as a class. They will view the actual photographs of real fireflies. The teacher will read about fireflies and discuss that they are really a form of a beetle. Also talk about their special characteristic that makes them flash. Use the websites above to look for other interesting insects. Go to google.com with the class and search the web for other insects if needed. On the board list the names of the insects found. Have students pick the insect they liked the best from the generated list and illustrate it on paper. Save the pictures to use for a classroom book.

Have the students work at the computer lab with partners to complete an insect word search. The word search will contain the insects that were found in the previous lesson and listed on the board. The teacher will have the word search made up on Microsoft Word for the students to complete. Have the students take turns shading in the insect names that they find. Talk about the importance of sharing with friends and helping each other to complete the word search.

Use bug manipulatives to represent the different insects the students drew in activity 3. Have students put their bug manipulative on a large piece of graph paper next to the same bug that is drawn on the graph. As a class, count how many of each bug was represented. Transfer this information to a teacher prepared pictograph on KidPix Deluxe 3. This graph will show the class’s favorite insects. Have each student use a different stamp that the teacher picks to represent the different insects. The students will each stamp their insect stamp in the correct place on the graph. Print out the graph when it is complete and discuss the computer graph. Compare the computer made graph to the one they made using the bug manipulatives in the room. Talk about which one they liked making the most and why. Also discuss what each graph shows and how they are alike.

Take a class trip to The Little Red School House. Bring a digital camera to document with pictures all the insects you see. Children will be put in cooperative groups to count how many different insects they find on the trip. A discussion will be had regarding groups, prior to going on the trip. This will help to have the students gain a better understanding of belonging to a group, getting along in their group, friendships and responsibilities in the group. With the help of parent chaperones, each group will write down the names of the insects they saw and estimate how many of each type.

Use the program Kidspiration to have students draw one insect they saw on the field trip and type its name, with help from the teacher. These will be printed and made into a class field trip book to show what we discovered on our trip. Have the students share their pictures and the names of the insects with another class in the school. This will also include digital pictures from the trip.

Students will be given different shapes of construction paper and will use these shapes to make their own insects. The teacher will give each student a partner to work with and a card with a number word on it next to the shape pictures. The partners will work together to make an insect using that number of shapes that are written on their card. For instance, four circles and three triangles could be used to make one insect and two squares and five rectangles could be used for another. The students will put their shape insects together and then draw faces and decorate them any way they wish. The teacher will videotape each pair of students showing their finished insects and telling what they used to make them. This will be a review of the number words and shapes and also an experience with oral speaking in front of the class. The students will get to view themselves on video when all partners have had a chance to show and tell about their insects.

Students will review the concepts of friendship and belonging and will be paired with different partners for this project. Discuss how we all belong to one class and it is important for everyone in our class to get along and develop many different friendships. Pair up students to do a patterning activity using die-cut insect shapes. Have each pair of students make an AB pattern and then an AABB pattern using their insect shapes. When this activity is finished, have the students continue working on patterns using the computer and the website Funschool.com and the game the Crazy Pattern Machine. Encourage the students to work with their partners if they need help with the pattern game. Also allow students to go the site, Kidsbcool.com to play the games that go along with The Very Lonely Firefly.

Students will be again paired up with a different class friend for this activity. Review with the class what we learned about fireflies and their special characteristics. Look at the website, www.alyencreations.com/grabbag/firefly.htm. View fireflies lighting up. Have students make their own light up fireflies using black construction paper, fluorescent chalk, hair spray to set the chalk, and a black light to make the pictures glow. Each student will draw their own firefly on the construction paper using the chalk. The teacher will spray it with the hairspray and then each student will get to work with their partners to shine the black light on their partners picture to make it glow.

Students will be expected to work with a partner to complete their own KidPix slides. The students will be told that throughout this unit we have found different friends in our room, just like the lonely firefly found friends in the story. We have also learned to work with our friends to help us complete projects and make learning more fun. Tell students that we are all going to work together as a class to make a Slideshow to show friendship and belonging. The teacher will demonstrate how to make a simple slide show. The first slide will be their names. The second slide will need to show a background chosen by the partners and show either two people or animals playing or doing something together that goes along with the background. For example: The students could have a beach background and have two animals with a toy on the beach or two people with sunglasses. Students will be told to work with their partners to find pictures they think would go together and then be able to tell the teacher why. The teacher will be helping the students to put the pictures in the slides if they need help. This may take more then one day to complete with all the children. The rubric used to assess the slide show will be as follows:

The students will be sharing their work in this unit with other classes in the school, when they read their insect books and display their insects in the hallways. The slideshow will also be shared with other classrooms to show what we did with our friends in our Kindergarten room.

Slideshow has a title slide with the names of both students working on the project.	10 points
Slideshow has a background for the second slide.	10 points
Slideshow has at least two stamps inserted in the second slide showing two people or two animals.	10 points
Slideshow has a picture of something the two people or animals are doing together.	10 points
The background and the pictures of what the people or animals are doing go together and are logical	10 points
Total Points	50 points

The teacher’s role in this unit will be to guide the students in learning about insects and the understanding of frie

ndship and belonging. The teacher will be a model for the qualities of a good friend and will be a co-learner when exploring the world of insects. The teacher will also facilitate the discussions throughout the unit and guide the students by explaining the needed concepts to successfully complete the lessons and mediate the partners and cooperative groups that will be used throughout the different lessons. The students’ roles will be to explore the world of insects using the different web sites provided by the teacher. They will also be developing their own meaning of the terms friendship and belonging while working with different partners on different assignments. The students will work as teachers when they help their partners complete different assignments. The students will be producers when they come up with products that they generate using the given materials and knowledge from the teacher during the unit.

World Book Encyclopedia’s to find more information or pictures of a specific insect.

FOR ADDITIONAL ONLINE INFORMATION AND MEDIA PERTAINING TO THIS UNIT, TEACHERS MAY WANT TO USE THE FOLLOWING INTERNET ARTICLES:

Description1: This site contains information on observing the effects of varying conditions on objects. It helps provide information on making glowing art pictures.

Description2: This site gives ideas on how to teach about the concept of light to primary children and ideas for lessons on light.

Description3: This site lists other Eric Carle books that could be used as a preview to The Very Lonely Firefly or as a follow up to reading the story. It also gives ideas of videos that would be good to include in a lesson.

Description4: This site gives ideas on how to use the Eric Carle books to teach about simple word problems. It shows samples of children’s work using drawings to illustrate different story problems.

Description5: This site lists ideas for using The Very Lonely Firefly in the Classroom. All are submitted by different teachers and are for different grade levels.

Description6: This site discusses trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship and how to model these things and teach them to children.

RELEVANT INFORMATION, STUDENTS WILL VISIT THE FOLLOWING WEB SITES: (minimum 6 sites)

Purpose of Use1: This site will give the students the opportunity to play some cute games that go along with the book, The Very Lonely Firefly.

Description1: This site contains some simple games that the students can play and would be good for students to extend their learning of the story by Eric Carle.

Purpose of Use2: This site will allow students to learn more about insects in general and the roles that they play in our lives.

Description2: This site contains stories and photographs of many different insects.

Purpose of Use3: This site will give the students a great deal of information about insects and will help them find some that they may never have heard of before. It will be useful for the Kindergarten students to help them find insect names to add to our insect list.

Description3: This site contains a large amount of insect information and is very kid friendly.

Purpose of Use4: This site will allow students to find out why fireflies light up and that there is a scientific reason for it.

Description4: This site shows pictures of fireflies and goes into details about them. It also explains why they light up.

Purpose of Use5: This site will allow students to find out about specific insects including the firefly.

Description5: This site allows you to type in any subject area to gather information/pictures on it. It is very easy to use and informative.

Purpose of Use6: This site will allow students to view fireflies lighting up and get different views of this.

Description6: This site shows fireflies lighting up and also gives more information on fireflies.