Lesson Plan
Researching Female Inventors
This engaging lesson plan provides first and second grade students with an opportunity to learn all about female inventors.
Grades:
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In this reading and writing lesson plan Researching Female Inventors, first and second graders will learn about several female inventors and scientists through a short research and informational writing activity. Through the use of videos, books, and informative websites, children will be inspired by the work of past and present female scientists, while building their vocabulary with terms such as "engineer," inventor," and "infectious disease." Then students will conduct their own research, write and illustrate about what they learned, and compare and contrast their findings with peers.
Learning Objectives
- Students will be able to conduct research.
- Students will be able to write an informative text.
Introduction
(10 minutes)- Gather the students together in a group.
- Explain to the students that today, they will be learning all about female inventors.
- Ask students to turn and talk to a partner, explaining what it means to invent something. Provide students with sentence stems/frames such as:
- An inventor is someone who ________.
- An inventor ________ new things.
- Allow students to briefly share their ideas with the rest of the class. Clarify that an inventor is someone who makes something that has never been made or has an idea that no one has had before. Record some other words that they may know that are similar to inventor, such as builder, creator, maker, innovator, or experimenter.
- Pass out a sticky note to each student. Explain to the students that they are going to watch a short video about a young inventor. As they watch, they should write down something interesting they learned, a question they have, or a picture that illustrates something that stood out to them as important or inspirational.
- Play the "A Young Scientist's Quest for Clean Water" video.
- Ask students to share out what they wrote on their sticky notes and place them on the whiteboard.