Lesson Plan : Cooperative Colors
Teacher Name: | Emily Zuber |
Grade: | Kindergarten |
Subject: | Language Arts |
Topic: | Colors |
Content: | Cooperative Structure: Simultaneous Roundtable Rationale: The purpose of this lesson is for students to engage in cooperative work through the stucture of simultaneous roundtable. I chose the simultaneous roundtable stucture because I felt the students will gain helpful experience working cooperatively while completing a task that they are each involved in. I think that this structure is something that the students can enjoy because they are learning how to work with their peers and they are using problem solving skills at the same time. Overall, students will gain valuable cooperative learning strategies because they are learning to work together in groups and each student is able to contribute their individual ideas to the rest of the group. Color words: Red, Blue, Yellow, Orange, Green, Purple, Brown, Black, Pink, White |
Goals: | Goals: Students will work with color words to think of objects that correspond to the different colors. |
Objectives: | Students will name and identify color words in cooperative groups. Students will work together to brainstorm objects that belong to different colors. Students will write the name or draw a picture of an object for various color words. |
Materials: | Cat's Colors, by Jane Cabrera White paper Color word sheets Pencils Crayons Resources: Curran, Lorna. Cooperative Learning for Little Ones. Resources for Teachers Inc: San Juan Capistrano, CA, 1991. (In consultation with Spencer Kagan, Ph.D.) Kagan, Dr. Spencer. Cooperative Learning. Kagan: San Clemente, CA, 1992, 1994. |
Introduction: | To introduce the lesson have students share different color words that they know. For further discussion, ask the students where they have seen these colors before. Introduce the book, Cat's Colors by Jane Cabrera. Before reading the book, ask students what colors they think they will see in the book. As you are reading the story, have students point out the different colors that they see on each page. When you are finished reading Cat's Colors, review with the students the different colors that were in the book. |
Development: | Tell the students they will be working in groups to brainstorm objects of different colors, just like the cat did in Cat's Colors. Each group will have three students. Introduce the concept of cooperative learning and ask the students if they know what this term means. When discussing the activity to the students make sure to stress the importance of cooperative work among the team members and the importance of everyone working together on the activity. Explain to the students that they will have three color word papers for each group and that each piece of paper will have a different color word on it. Each group member should only have one color word sheet. Use one of the color word sheets to model for the students what they will be doing. First, point out the color word at the top of the paper. Then have the students work with you to brainstorm an object that is that particular color. If the color word is blue, then you could draw a blueberry or write the word blueberry on the color word paper. Show the students what you have done. Tell the students that when they have finished drawing their object or writing the name of their object on their first color word paper, that they will be passing their paper to the group member to their left. Have students practice passing the papers in their groups so they know what direction to pass them in. It may be helpful to use one of the groups to model for the other students what it looks like to pass the papers around correctly. Explain that they will continue to pass the papers around in the group until the time is up. Tell the students that it is okay if they get the same color word more then once. Have them draw or write another object for that color word. Next, point out the two pictures on the bottom of the color word papers.(the man running and the man showing the quiet sign) Explain to the students what they will be doing with these pictures at the very end of the activity. Tell the students that if they think their group worked quickly, to color in the man running. If the students believe that their group worked quietly, to color in the man showing the quiet sign.(Reminder: this is to be performed at the completion of the activity.) |
Practice: | Each group should receive three colors word papers. As you call each group to collect their supplies, hand out one color word paper to each team member. Make sure that each student has a different color word from the rest of their team members. At this time, the students should also get a pencil and crayons to decorate their color word papers with. Before having students begin the activity, make sure that each student knows what color word they are beginning with. Encourage groups to help fellow team members if they are struggling with the names of the colors. Also before beginning the activity, remind the students of the two pictures at the bottom of the page. Review what these pictures stand for. (Running man: worked quickly, Man with quiet sign: worked quietly). Let the students know that you will be giving them a certain amount of time to complete this activity. Set a timer to the designated working time. Now it is time for the students to begin. Monitor the groups as they are completing the activity. Remind the students that they need to pass their papers to the group memeber on their left as soon they have completed one object for the color word paper they are working on. Motivate students who may be having a difficult time brainstorming and encourge their teams members to help tese students as well. Recognize groups who are working cooperatively and use them as models for the rest of the class. When the designated work time has expired, have students share the objects they brainstormed for each color word. |
Accommodations: | Some students may need extra help identifying colors and the name of the colors. In order to help these students, have a color chart set up in the room so these students can use this visual aid as a resource during the lesson. If there are ESL students in the classroom it would also be very helpful to post the names of the colors in languages other than just English. Some students may also have a difficult time brainstorming objects of a particular color, so having picture books available to these students would be very helpful. The students will be performing at different developmental levels and not all of the students will be able to write the names of the objects they are using for their color words. Give students the option to use pictures and drawings instead of written words for this activity. There may be some students in the classroom who have not had experience working in groups before or working cooperatively with others. To accomodate these students it would be wise to provide additonal time to model what it looks like to work with others and before beginning the lesson it might also be helpful to do some quick activities that foster cooperative learning with others. |
Checking For Understanding: | To assess the students' understanding of the lesson, have groups pair up together. Invite the students to share the color word sheets they made as a group and have them discuss the objects that they made for each one. The groups could also brainstorm together and think of additional objects that could be placed on each color sheet. |
Closure: | To wrap up the lesson, read the story Cat's Colors again with the students. For each color in the story, call on students to share some other objects the cat could have mentioned for each of the colors in the book. Remind them to think about their brainstorming sheets that they made in groups. Gather the students as a whole group. Ask students questions about this lesson and about the experience they had working in cooperative groups. Ask about the challenges that they experienced and what they did that worked really well. At this time you can have students share their thoughts about if they thought their group worked quietly or quickly. |
Evaluation: | One way to assess the students is to have each group share their color words sheets to the whole class. Each student could also share their individual color sheet to the class and tell what object they made for that color and why. Another wonderful way to assess the students' progress is to make a work product out of all of the color word sheets that the students made individually. Making a color book would be a great way to show each students' progress through the lesson. You could also refer back to the work product very easily to see which students may need additional instruction in this content and topic area. |
Teacher Reflections: | This lesson was so much fun to do with my Kindergarten class. They love working with colors so I knew this activity would be a hit with them. They really enjoyed the book at the beginning of the lesson and I think that this was a great way to focus their attention on colors. Before doing the brainstorming activity with the students, I made sure to put the students in assigned groups beforehand. I knew that if I put the groups together, it would make the lesson run more smoothly. When I divided the class up into groups of three, it worked perfectly because there were twenty one students in my class. On the day of my lesson, one student was absent so I had one group of two. I was very excited about this because it was an opportunity for the students to problem solve. I still gave this group three papers, so they had to think of what they could do to make the activity work with just the two of them. They worked very well together and they ended up making it work with just the two of them. Some groups were having difficulty staying on task and passing the papers around in their group but they got better as we kept practicing. I was so impressed with some of the objects that the students came up with for the colors! They were so creative and imaginative! Throughout the activity, I constantly reminded the students to work cooperatively which I think was very helpful in keeping them focused on the task. There were some students who had trouble identifying some of the color words, so I had out color charts for them to refer to. I also encouraged the other members in the group to assist these students and I found that they were very eager to help out. Overall I feel that the students did a wonderful job with this lesson. I felt that this activity helped them gain additional knowledge and experience with colors as well as working in cooperative groups. |
| Create New Lesson Plan | Lesson Plan Center |