Invention Convention

Unit Authors

This unit was developed by Cathie Hunsberger, Sue Baden, and Suzanne Bell-Dragoon and delivered to 7th graders at Santiago Middle School in several forms over the last three years. (Include link to the teachers' home pages, if any, and to the school).

Content Areas

This unit is a lesson in integrating Science, Language Arts, and Social Studies. It involves incorporating a Science fair to make and display an invention. In Language Arts the students will be reading a novel and writing essays about inventions and moral issues surrounding new inventions. In Social Studies the students will research an inventor and their invention and actively present their research in an innovative way.

Organizing Theme

The organizing theme of this interdisciplinary unit isInventions

Implementation

The lesson involves three classes. This therefore lends itself to a multidisciplinary project that will last for six weeks. It was taught in 3 class periods per day. In this lesson the students will focus on the following: a. Social Studies Students will focus on:

• The connective and interdependent nature of inventions
• How the inventive nature of people works
• How invention molds and changes society

• Biographies of famous inventors
• The role that moral decisions should play in the inventing process
• The protocols involved in formal presentation of student work in the community
• Speech Students will present original material in a formal setting. They will be able to speak about their projects with self-confidence. They will use basic public speaking criteria to be effective with their audience

• hands on application of scientific principles to create an original or innovative product
• Importance of the use of an inventor's journal
• daily discussion of great American invention stories

Outline of Activities

The time line of the project is as follows:

Week one:

1. Introduce to classes
2. Discuss the project
3. discussion of things around us? Why were they invented? What use are they? etc.
4. How would you go about deciding on an invention?
5. Lesson on Invent America

1. Library research
2. Proposal and proposed work outline due
3. At the beginning of each period, share the background of an invention(group or independently)

1. Journal checks

1. Inventions Fair
2. Invited guests
3. Students answer questions and support their work

Student Products

The students came up with many interesting displays. One display had colorful crystals that showed the different colors and rays of the sun. These were to replace flashlights. Stay tuned for picts. and gifs. of these projects.

Thinking Skills Engaged

The invention program was implemented with many goals and thinking skills in mind. Here are the focus of the program.

1. To raise self esteem
2. To increase parent involvement
3. To assist children with the application and synthesis of knowledge and skills
4. To experience the scientific method
5. To encourage creative thinking
6. To motivate students to learn
7. To integrate the curriculum
8. To develop higher order thinking skills

• When children invent, they move quickly through the taxonomy by using previous knowledge, comprehension skills, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation.
• to enhance library and research skills.

The project was also used to follow CAP and State Framework alignment: The critical thinking skills involved were:

1. Defining and clarifying problems.
   • Looking for central issues.
   • Looking for relevant information:
   • Formulate questions.
2. Solving problems and drawing conclusions.
   • Probable consequences and causality: in-class discussions on Yankee ingenuity, Jacks and Jills of all trades, during class review of colonial heritage.

Lessons Learned

After the unit was over many of the teachers felt it was very successful. They were quite surprised by some of the intricacy of the projects. They also felt that it was challenging to many of the students. The main thing that they would change is the pacing of the lesson. Some teachers felt that the project s time line was too rapid and that given more time they would have gotten better projects from some students that had problems with attendance. These students fell behind easily when they missed just a couple of days. If the time line was stretched by an extra week or so they thought that many of these students could of caught up and done a much better, non-rushed, job on their project. Overall, the teachers felt this unit was very rewarding and contained all of the outcomes they wished to achieve.