Inquiry Lesson Plan Template (with Four Ways of Thinking

connection)
Teacher: Anne Chung
Content & Title: What
Grade Level: 5
Should I Grow In My
Garden?
Standards:

Objectives (Explicit & Measurable):

Students will know what plants to grow in their gardens to ensure a successful
harvest.
Evidence of Mastery (Measurable Assessment: formative and summative):
(formative): Anecdotal records of students progress and class discussions in
TPS activities.
(summative):
Sub-objectives, SWBAT (steps that lead to completion of objective; sequence from
simple to more complex):

Lesson Summary and Justification: (summary gives detailed information about what
students are doing. Justification why is this lesson being taught)

Students will be learning

Background Knowledge: (What do students need to know prior to completing this
lesson)

Misconception: (what possible misleading thoughts might students have?)

Process Skills: (what skills are you introducing or reinforcing)
Four Ways of Thinking connection: (Provide a complete explanation of how your
lesson plan connects to futures, system, strategic, or values thinking. Define the way of
thinking you selected and used in this lesson plan. Remember, this should be included
meaningfully in the lesson plan.)
Students will use Strategic Thinking by having them formulate a plan to ensure their gardens yield a
plentiful harvest.
Safety: (what safety rules and items need to be addressed?)

Inquiry Questions: (testable in the here and now.)

1. (to explore) Can I grow my favorite foods in this climate?
2. (to elaborate)

Key vocabulary: (list and define)

Materials: (list item and possible quantity)

1. Nutrients
2. Temperature
3. Environment/ Ecosystem

1. Feely bags
2. Assorted fruits and vegetables for Feely bags
3.SMARTboard

Engage - Teacher activates prior knowledge to students about the active and inactive
properties of plants by introducing an interactive game on SmartBoard. Main focus
question that derives from BIG THEME: Where does your food come from?
Teacher Will: (hook)
Students Will:
Introduce interactive game on
Participate and sit in communal area
SmartBoard that focusses on
during introduction period. Use class
where certain produce comes
disciplinary protocols.
from :
Classify and answer questions based
http://www.foodafactoflife.or
on classification activity. In this section
g.uk/Activity.aspx?
students will be in Think. Pair. Share

siteId=14&sectionId=63&con
(T.P.S) grouping to ensure
tentId=174
Share their ideas about what they
Classification activity with feely
understand from prompted questions.
bags that have different plants
Draw a conceptual map that reflects
( both processed and nontheir current knowledge of where
processed) in them ( e.g. where
certain fruits and vegetables are
do you think this popcorn came
produced.
from?) Feely bags should have
other vegetables and foods.
(elaborate) this becomes a
precursor to ensuring that
students nave theories are
diminished ( some students may
still think that some fruits and
vegetables come from the
supermarket rather than from
Agricultural land.
Assessment type: Diagnostic
Assessment.
Best Teaching Practice Strategy/Differentiation/ELL and Teacher Notes:
Ensure that students with lower Zone of Proximal Development ( ZPD) are paired with
students that exceed the intended outcome and skills. In this case, most of the
communal activities will be done as a whole class and co-construction of knowledge
will adhere to students mastery of objectives.
Explore - In this section students should take the lead and actively use materials
to discover information that will help them answer the question posed in
Engage. Teachers may choose to give steps to follow, especially for younger students,
but the goal is for students to discover some or all of the sub-objectives of the lesson.
Teacher Will: (pose IQ #1)
Students Will: (list all steps)
Record their findings in record books
Create environment that ensures
Discuss their ideas and refine their
Project based/ interested led
nave theories.
learning occurs.

Starts discussion on why plants

grow more efficiently in various
areas as opposed to others.
Best Teaching Practice Strategy/Differentiation/ELL and Teacher Notes
Explain In this section students share what they discovered, teacher connects
student discoveries to correct content terms/explanations, students
articulate/demonstrate a clear and correct understanding of the lesson sub-objectives
by answering the question from Engage before moving on.
Teacher Will:
Students Will:
Make cross-curricular links with
work collaboratively to share their
English Literature: How does my
ideas and misconceptions of where
Garden Grow? By Gerda Muller.
produce grows
Begin class discussion explaining
Identify the active conditions in which
the importance of the active
plants
components in planting
Make predictions about how changing
vegetables and fruits.
the physical conditions of the
Provide valuable opportunities for
environment impacts on the growth

students to investigate the

and survival of living things, eg
following questions:
different amounts of light or water on
What was the best
plant growth or the effect of different
temperatures on the growth of yeast or
environment that allowed the
bread mould
plants to grow and how do you
know this ?
investigate questions and predictions
(In students designated
by collecting and recording data.
groups) If you were to create
Share and reflect on their experiences
an environment to help the
and make explicit comparison of ideas
protagonist in the story: What
in a table.
conditions would your
environment have? What
materials would you need ?
Best Teaching Practice Strategy/Differentiation/ELL and Teacher Notes
Elaborate In this section students take the basic learning gained from Explore and
clarified in Explain and apply it to a new circumstance or explore a particular aspect of
this learning at a deeper level. Students should be using higher order thinking in this
stage. A common practice in this section is to ask a What If? question. IQ #2
Teacher Will: (pose IQ #2)
Students Will:
Best Teaching Practice Strategy/Differentiation/ELL and Teacher Notes
Evaluate In this section every student demonstrates mastery of the lesson
objective (though perhaps not mastery of the elaborate content). Because this also
serves as a closing, students should also have a chance to summarize the big
concepts they learned outside of the assessment.
Teacher Will:
Students Will:

work cooperatively and individually

to explore and reflect of what they
have learned.
Create a new conceptualised map
about what they have learned
throughout the lesson sequence.

Closure: (revisit objective, IQs and make real world connections)

**Best Practices List the Best Teaching Practices you will use to enhance
the learning outcomes. In each section where prompted, list the best
practice, how the practices will be used and the purpose.