Submitted by Mary Bartolini

Objectives:

Content:
Students will: 

• Identify the three states of water.
• Differentiate examples and non-examples of three states of water. 
• Categorize water representation in three states.

Cultural:

Language: Content Obligatory
Students will:

• Use the adjectives sólido, líquido and gaseoso to name the three states of water with the term estado (estado sólido [solid state], estado líquido [liquid state], estado gaseoso [gas state]).

Language: Content Compatible
Students will:

• Use question word quién (who) and the second person singular present tense of querer plus the infinitive of the verbs to share jobs into small groups with ¿Quieres ...? (¿quieres buscar?, ¿quieres cortar?)
• Use the first person singular of the verb querer (to wish) and the infinitive to accept or refuse a job with yo quiero cortar or yo no quiero pegar.
• Use the contraction del to identify examples, e.g. el río es un ejemplo del estado líquido

Learning Strategies / Social and Skills Development:
Students will:

• work cooperatively in pairs to create a poster.

Time Frame:

Day 4 (one 45-minute period)

Materials Needed:

·        Poster song Yo soy el agua (see attachment in lesson 1)

·        Flashcards

·        Book “Y aún podría ser agua” (see Resources)

·        Magazines, scissors, glue, paper, markers, pencils

Description of Assessment (Performance Project):

Preview Phase

Students sing the song Yo soy el agua. This time students show each representation with body movements.

Focused Learning Phase

Teacher asks if we find water always in the same state ¿Encontramos el agua siempre en la misma forma o en el mismo estado?

Teacher introduces new terminology for the class and presents three posters with the phrases estado líquido (liquid state), estado sólido (Solid state), and estado gaseoso (gas state). The idea is to create a graphic organizer at the end of the presentation (see attachment).

Teacher shows flashcards with examples for each state of water and identifies basic characteristics of each state by asking questions like ¿Cómo es el agua en este estado? (How is water in this state?) ¿Está quieta o está siempre corriendo? (Is it still or moving?) ¿Podemos tocarla/podemos sentirla? (Can we touch it or feel it?) ¿Es suave o dura? (is it soft or hard?) ¿Podemos verla o no? (Can we see it?)

Expansion Phase

Teacher reads the book “Y aún podría ser agua” and emphasizes the importance of water.

When the book starts talking about different states of water, teacher changes the intonation to call students’ attention in the new information and stops to point to the state of water posters that they observed before. Teacher also stops to write new examples of each state under the posters in order to complete the graphic organizer.

Students form pairs and create a poster for display as environmental print (follow example of graphic organizer). Students cut and paste different representations of water from a magazine organizing the pictures into estado sólido, estado líquido and estado gaseoso.

Students make an oral presentation to the class.

Technology extension:
A possible variation for this activity, if technology is available, would be to have learners create their own graphic organizer using a concept/semantic mapping software adapted to the age/grade level such as Kidspiration.  The teachers could select many graphics/images of water ahead of time using the list of web sites provided in the unit overview section.  These images could then be either burned to a CD, stored on each computer, or listed on a TrackStar web page for learners to access in class. http://trackstar.4teachers.org/trackstar/index.jsp 

When the activity is completed, students could simply showcase their graphic organizer to the class.Ultimately, learners would be engaged in completing a similar activity to the paper and pencil one described above but their final product could be published online (using the school network or else) for others to see (family, classmates, and more).  They would also begin to practice using technology to support their learning process, an important skill to develop early.

In the event that the necessary software is not available, the teacher could decide to have students use the multimedia software (Kid Pix) that they will be required to use to complete their final project (if the technology option is selected).  Kid Pix could also be used to develop a graphic organizer and could be used in this lesson as a training session to ensure that learners are familiarized with the software prior to completing their final project.  This would remove the need of having one class period completely dedicated to training on the software. 

Additional ideas:

Teacher shows different representations of water and students record how many examples of each state of water they are observing in a Tally-chart (see attachment)

Students classify different representations of water in a T-chart into two categories: example/ non-example (see attachment)

Assessment:

• Observing students’ interactions into group activities.

References and Resources:

Fowler, Allan (1993). Y aún podría ser agua. Children Press, Inc.

Attachments:

NOTE: some attachments are in PDF form (get Acrobat Reader)

Graphic organizer (example from Inspiration): Estados del agua

Graphic Organizer: Estados del agua
T-chart: Ejemplos y no ejemplos del estado sólido
Tally-chart: Cuadro de tachas

A Lesson from the CoBaLTT Project
/cobaltt
Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition
University of Minnesota