I. Curricular Framework

Concept:

Vision

Essential Question:

How can you control solutions by making intelligent decisions?

Bridge:

Perspective

Content:

A Study of Inventions and Problem Solving Solutions

Outcomes:

II. Standards Aligned

III. Instruction and Assessment

1. Connect: Connecting to the Concept Experientially

Objective: To gain personal understanding of the increasing complexity of tools.

Activity: Students will produce a product, such as instant pudding, using a progression of tools working through stations. First station will use wooden spoon. Second, will use a wire wisk. Third, will use a hand-held egg beater. Fourth will use an electric mixer.

Assessment: Student participation in activity.

2. Attend: Attending to the Connection

Objective: To examine the similarities and differences of tools. To understand how and why improvements are made in existing tools.

Activity: Students will eat the products and analyze the different characteristics of the pudding produced at each station. Students will analyze the series of tools. Students will note the attributes of the tool and the product made at each station. Students will observe the improvement of the tool from station to station and the changing attributes of the ensuing product.

Assessment: Student participation and verbal response.

Assessment, Phase One, Level of Engagement, Fascination:

3. Image: Creating a Mental Picture

Objective: To become aware of patterns and transformations in order to see how the old can be rearranged or elaborated on to become new.

Activity: Students view Images via overhead transparencies showing objects from different points of view. Students will respond noting the observer's point of view in each instance. Same images changing by differing perspective. Copies of Escher Prints are shown as students note differences in perspective.

Assessment: Quality of student attention and response.

Assessment, Phase Two, Seeing the Big Picture:

4. Inform: Receiving Facts & Knowledge

Objective: To develop thinking techniques and strategies--such as the Consequences Wheel and Alex Osborn's SCAMPER strategy--to empower students to solve problems. To understand the historical development of tools and the ensuing effects on a civilization.

Activity: Students will participate in directed reading activities of the stories of various everyday inventions such as the shopping cart. Students will learn of inventions that occurred by mistake, but were capitalized upon by the alertness of the inventor to possibilities. Students will generate lists of characteristics of inventors as thinkers prepared for opportunities. Students will be instructed in Alex Osborn's SCAMPER techniques and see how substitution, minification, etc. will generate new ideas for invention. Students will be instructed in ways to evaluate inventions. Students will explore problem situations from different perspectives using a Consequences wheel which explores possible ramifications of solutions. Students will explore how inventors use analogies to come up with new ideas.

Assessment: Student oral and written responses throughout directed activities and completion of a consequences wheel.

Assessment, Phase Three, Success with Acquiring Knowledge:

5. Practice: Developing Skills

Objective: To provide practice in analyzing objects so that specific attributes can be improved upon. To provide practice in looking at existing things in new ways.

Activity: Application of Alex Osborn's SCAMPER strategy as various classroom objects are minified, maximized, etc. Note attributes of objects so that they can be combined in new ways. In groups of four, students take ordinary objects, analyze what is the thing they find the most difficult about it, and then design an improvement, such as a tape dispenser that dispenses pieces of tape in exact lengths as programmed by a key pad. Analyze invention, such as moving belt to load the school bus. List people that might be affected. Construct a consequences wheel that projects possible consequences from all points of view.

Assessment: Student ability to work in groups and complete activities.

Assessment, Phase Four, Success with Acquiring Skills:

6. Extend: Extending Learning to the Outside World

Objective: To develop an awareness that complex inventions and/or technological processes have developed from additions to simpler inventions and/or the addition of deletion of attributes. To understand the necessity for open mindedness in brainstorming possibilities and provide students with opportunity to understand that they can monitor group solutions by making intelligent decisions.

Activity: In teams of four, students will set up companies and select a current invention or tehcnological process and do historical research to observe trends. Companies will project what that invention might be like 25 years from now. The projects must be plausible not involving magic or extraordinary powers.

Assessment: Group design of a project.

7. Refine: Refining the Extension

Objective: To initiate, plan, and refine a creative presentation incorporating elements of creative problem solving.

Activity: Students will project the impact of their future invention on that culture. Students will use the consequences wheel to evaluate priorities. Students will create their choice of one or any combination of newspaper or magazine advertising of the new invention, television commercials, talk shows with interviews with inventors and reactions of those affected by the new invention or any other format they may devise.

Assessment: Quality of the creative production.

8. Perform: Creative Manifestation of Material Learned

Objective: To provide the opportunity for students to present and imagine possible real-life applications of the learning. To help students understand that they can control solutions by making intelligent decisions.

Activity: Group presentation of futurized technology project to an audience.

Assessment: Quality of student presentation and enthusiasm of audience.

Assessment, Phase Five,Performance, Creative Use of Material Learned: