Encourage tinkering with ideas, relationships, connections. Set up situations where students have to find information not readily available in school texts. Provide opportunity for students to design open-ended explorations of the concept. Provide multiple options so students can plan a unique "proof" of learning.

Sense Practice

Objective: Students will be able to identify objects, surroundings, and unknowns using a particular sense.

Activity: Use centers or whole group gatherings to extend learning of the senses.
Touch: Read “Steven and the Mystery Monster” during the story pass a bag around the circle with contents for students to reach inside and feel and pass on.
Hearing: Take a walk outdoors to listen to those outdoor sounds. Write a poem using sound words.
Taste: Discuss 4 basic flavors, salty, sweet, sour and bitter. Have the students taste 8 different foods and record, which foods fit into each of the four groups. Form a bar graph of the students’ favorite tastes.
Smell: Pass around 4 mystery boxes with different fruits inside. Students draw a picture of what is in each box. (Another option: draw a picture of something that smells like a flower. Outline the object in glue and sprinkle with different spices.)
Sight: Walk around the classroom with a tray of 10 objects. Remove one without the class seeing and have them guess the missing item.

Assessment: During the center activities, the teacher will observe extensions of concepts, new insights and originality the students are expressing through activities tied to the theme of senses.